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GUIDES 



TO THE 



HIGHER LIFE 



SELECTIONS FROM THE SERMONS 
AND OTHER WRITINGS 



OF 



Rev. J. Walter Sylvester 

MINISTER TO THE SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ALBANY, N. Y. 



Selected and Edited 
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E T. llEYSEB, 



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No man ever follows the guiding star of his life 
without its leading him in adoration 
to the feet of the Holy One. 



1903 






« -. . 









Copyrighted, 1903, 

BY 

J. WALTER SYLVESTER 



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PREFACE 



The quotations contained in this little 

volume have been gathered mainly from 

sermons and prayers. A few poems that 

seemed to have special application have 

been added, and several selections have been 

taken from addresses delivered by the 

author from time to time. 

A. T. K. 



INTRODUCTION 

Would you have me tell you how you 
may be sure that there is a God and that 
life is a divine gift? Would you have me 
tell you how you may enter into the con- 
sciousness of his love? Then observe that 
I am setting you to no high and mighty 
endeavor, that I am not talking about things 
mysterious and other worldly. Go out today 
determined to grapple in a new spirit with 
all the ordinary experiences in life, and see 
if they will not react upon your faith, 
quicken within you a new sense of the 
divine life; dwell upon those facts and 
experiences that are designed to kindle pity ; 
consider how men are to be forgiven, since 
they are so weak of will; nourish all the 
deep desires that come to you, but do not 
drop from your hand the homely duty ; take 
nothing of your soul's trouble and doubt 
and bitterness to other men — they have 
enough in their own lives ; act toward them 
as though they were your brothers; live ill 
those natural feelings that are the common 
inheritance of the race ; do not seek for the 
unusual experiences, but emphasize the 
everyday loves and hopes and joys; re- 
member that this is a hard world, in which 
thousands and tens of thousands are dailv 
overthrown, a world torn and bleeding and 
needing your healing touch ; think upon the 

5 



Introduction 

unseen battles that are being waged, the 
lives that are tossed by storms, the people 
who are desperately fighting for a bare 
chance to live; think of all who are crying 
to God for help, all who are hungry and 
thirsty for companionship ; speak some word 
that may help a brother to forget his sin, to 
overcome his sorrow, to ease his pain; tell 
him some story of joy and comfort and 
blessed hope; have less and less to do with 
the controversies and arguments that divide 
men, and more and more with the fraternal 
interests that unite them; help men to 
understand what gentleness and love mean ; 
lead them by your companionship into that 
deep quiet that comes only to those who 
have found sympathy; dwell upon those 
things that are simple, the things of the 
child spirit, easy to be understood; do not 
permit yourself to divide men into classes 
as you think of them — all are brothers in 
God's sight, needing forgiveness, rich and 
poor, learned and unlearned — all, all are 
children of the one Father; cease thinking 
and talking so much about business and 
fashion, about the things of the senses ; make 
one earnest effort to realize something of 
God's presence as it is striving to make itself 
known to you in all the simple joys and 
delights and duties of daily life. Live thus 
with all your power for one year, and see 
if the thought and the presence of God will 
not become real to you. 

J. W. S. 
6 



Guides to the Higher Life 

j The present is rooted in the 

•* ^ past, but it has its fruitage in 

the future. The rosebud should not strive 
to remain a bud; nor should it become im- 
patient and complain because it must wait 
till tomorrow to become a rose. It never 
will fulfil itself by remaining a bud; nor 
will it fulfil itself by separating itself from 
the bush. In the vegetation of the garden 
and in the vegetation of the soul there is 
this same divine law of necessity. That 
which is today comes out of the past, but 
it has no divine meaning unless it is the 
prophecy of something better in the future. 



j The material out of which you 

•* y are to build your character is 

here at your very hand. 

The possibility of all that you can ever 
be lies within your life today. 

Tanuarv ^ Cherish your life as you would 
J y * cherish some crown jewel of 

priceless value. Throw away the trappings 
of life, the rubbish that gathers about life, 
throw all this away. But your life itself, 
the secret sacredness of your soul's being — 
this must be kept from the stain of impure 
thoughts and guarded from the wild, deep- 
passioned assaults of unworthy motives. 



Guides to the Higher Life 

* Discouragement has no place 

J ^ ^ in the Christian economy of 

motives. Go on doing God's will. Go on 
building up your life on its Christ side. 
Exercise the patience that is yours, and 
from strength will come greater strength. 
You have not realized your dreams ? Never 
mind, are you realizing God's dreams ? Be 
thankful for even the unrealized dreams. 

Tanuarv s T1 ? e hi S hest priesthood is the 
J y ** priesthood of service. The 

true priest of the most high God is the man 
who ministers to those in need. He may be 
an appointed minister or a layman ; he may 
stand in the pulpit of a church or at the 
bench of a carpenter; he may labor in the 
sanctuary or in the shop — it matters not 
in the sight of God. There are just as true 
priests today in our houses of business as in 
our houses of worship. Any man living 
may be a priest if he will, not a priest after 
the ecclesiastical ideal but a priest after the 
ideal of Jesus. 

Tanuarv 6 ^■ en te ^ us ^ at Christianity 
J ^ is only a good life, thus reduc- 

ing to a mere ethnic force the thing that 
has changed and transformed this world. 
Christianity is more than a good deed; it 
is the inspiration out of which the deed 
gathers itself, as the wave out of the ocean ; 
it is the song of an angel ; it is the radiance 
of a star; it is the mystery and passion of 
a divine love. 
8 



Guides to the Higher Life 

T Happiness is possible to any 

J y ' man, however environed he 

may be by trouble. There have been those 
who, out of the heart of the world's misery, 
have gathered the golden treasure of an 
almost divine happiness. Thousands, 
broken and breathless, have battled their 
way through life's raging tempest to find 
at its center the holy calm of God's peace. 

T Q May we have the single eye 

January a that shaU gee Thy guiding 

hand and the ear that shall hear and appre- 
hend the whispers of Thy will. 

Passing strange it seems that any soul 
should be disobedient to the heavenly 
vision. 



, Strive with all your power to 

J y 9 right the wrongs of life, to do 

away with the inequalities of life. Let your 
murmuring be loud and insistent wherever 
and whenever there is a question of justice 
to those who are being wronged. But see to 
it that your murmuring does not spring out 
of envy of other people's good fortune. 
The moment you begin to covet that which 
you have not earned, that which is not 
yours, that which you have no right to 
touch — that moment joy goes out of your 
life, that moment your soul begins to shrivel 
in the sight of God. 

9 



Guides to the Higher Life 

T May this whole day be given 

January 10 tQ the Father in aU the ardor 

of perfect trust, and finding him in wor- 
ship and in prayer may we find peace. 

j The secret of contentment is 

^ ^ to have in one's soul the sense 

of God's overruling. To believe that there 
is a divine power overshadowing us, that if 
only we trust ourselves to God's guidance 
he will care for us — it is this that causes 
strong content to flow into a man's soul as 
molten iron into a mold. So long as you 
believe that there is nothing in life except 
what your hands can grasp, just so long 
will your soul be filled with greed and your 
heart burn with covetous desire. But rise 
by the power of faith in Christ and in all 
Christ accomplished, into the sweet realiza- 
tion of those words, " I will not fail thee 
nor forsake thee," and at once the restless 
passions of worldly greed and envy are 
stilled, and over your life and through it 
creeps the calm of an infinite content. 

T Progress in character is by 

January 12 means f i n fl ue nce. We be- 
come like those with whom we live and 
associate. Turn from wrong ways, wrong 
thoughts, wrong associations, wrong 
actions ; turn to God in the teachable spirit 
of a child; dwell with him and you will 
become like him. 
10 



Guides to the Higher Life 

, There are certain things that 

•* ^ ^ a man should fear. He should 

fear lest he prove himself a traitor to the 
high cause, he should fear all those subtle 
shapes of sin that rob one of his manly 
powers, above ail he should fear the degene- 
ration of his spiritual faculties. But there 
should be no fear of God and of his part in 
the great work; all distrust should center 
in ourselves. 



T God tests us in the light of 

January 14 . , t ™< . ^ 

J J ^ our ideals, lhere is only one 

ideal of imperishable worth in this great 

world of God's, and that is the ideal of 

righteousness. 

Let us know that strange thrill of the 
soul that vibrates only when the sweet note 
of righteousness is touched. 



* It is not in what we are doing 

•* y 5 j-hat we make our great mis- 



take, it is in what we are failing to do ; it 
is not that we are winning the bread of life 
but that we are so largely failing to win 
the life itself; it is not that we are sowing 
to the flesh and reaping money or fame or 
comfort, but that we are too nearly failing 
to hold these things in such a way that out 
of them shall come the spiritual harvest of 
a divine life. 

11 



Guides to the Higher Life 

* fi God's kingdom, with all its 

•* y unseen spiritual ministries, is 

all about us. 

Was there ever an emergency in which 
some angel hand did not help you? 

T You make a mistake when 

January 17 yQU tfy tQ Hve upQn the 

beliefs of your childhood ; you make quite as 
much of a mistake when you fling those 
beliefs away. Search behind them till you 
find out the essential realities that those out- 
grown beliefs symbolized. Do not long for 
the simple faith of your past, nor strive to 
live forever in the faith of your present, but 
standing firm on the past, out of the wealth 
of the material of this present day build 
the larger and nobler faith of the future. 



Tanuarv 18 So Iong a . s you Iiv( r U1 ? der . the 
J y presumption that life is given 

for enjoyment alone, so long you will meet 

disappointment. But once grant that we 

are here to learn spiritual lessons, and you 

will see how everything falls into place. 

Even our sorrows teach us — yea, far more 

than our joys. 



12 



Guides to the Higher Life 

T He who breaks the law of 

J y 9 na ture and of God must 

expect to see the closed gate and the flam- 
ing sword. 

May the marvel of Thy divine forgive- 
ness be greater than our guilt. 



T There is much of heroism in 

January 20 ,, , , u 

J J the world unseen by any eye 

save that of God. The faults of people lie 

so plain before our eyes, it is so difficult a 

thing to put ourselves in their places, that 

all unconsciously we form the habit of 

criticizing them. If we accustom ourselves 

to expect the heroic in our friends and in 

people generally, though we may often be 

deceived, there will be many times when we 

shall be proved to be no false prophet. 



T We are not to abandon the 

J y building- and the launching" of 



the dreamships that we call our hopes, sim- 
ply for the reason that they are likely to 
be broken on the rocks. Does not a man 
grow by defeat quite as much as by success ? 
It matters not, in the far reckoning of 
things, whether a man's ships be broken or 
come at last to some desired haven. As 
God lives, the only thing of importance is 
whether, in the breaking of his ships, the 
man himself is broken. 

13 



Guides to the Higher Life 

Tanuarv 22 Lif . e consists in the fulfilling 
J y of its relations. We are born 

into certain relations. As we grow older 
and as our lives develop, these relations are 
multiplied. Those of the child are few and 
simple, but the child who develops truly and 
normally fulfils them, such as they are. All 
along the swift course of life, from infancy 
to old age, the power and success of a life 
are measured by the fulfilment of its rela- 
tions. 

Tanuarv 2* HeI P. us t0 realize that until 
J y 6 we yield our wills to Thine 

there is nothing high in us and nothing 
holy, and that we but weary ourselves chas- 
ing the shadows of self-desire. 



* Public opinion should control 

•* y 4 neither the pew nor the pul- 

pit. The pulpit especially should shape the 
course of its thought by the fixed stars. It 
has nothing to do with the voice of public 
sentiment ; it should listen for the still small 
voice of the ages. What is the mind of 
God? How does he reveal himself and 
where may such revelation be found? If 
God has spoken, what is his message? 
These are the questions for the pulpit. And 
the minister once having received the mes- 
sage of the gospel, needs, even more than 
other men, to take heed lest he drift away 
from the things that he has heard. 

14 



Guides to the Higher Life 

j Faith is a flower, as delicate 

•* y 5 as it is fragrant; it must be 

nourished with the utmost care. 

Help us to live by all the sacred intuitions 
of trust as well as by sight. 



T c There are four circles of 

January 26 . . r , ,* 

J J opinion : first, the opinion a 

man forms of himself; second, the opinion 
his friends form of him ; third, the opinion 
of the world concerning him ; fourth, God's 
opinion of him (the reality of his inner life). 
The honest man is the man who brings all 
these opinions into harmony and consist- 
ency. 



I We are living in either the 

** * ' objective or the subjective. 

A man lives the objective life when he gives 
himself up to the things that he may touch 
and see, the material things. In this kind 
of life there is ever a yearning, a hungering, 
a half-formed vision. If old age comes on, 
if the vision is blurred, the soul hunger is 
unsatisfied. The objective life is known to 
be slipping away, then comes the longing 
for the subjective life — the life within, 
made up of faith and hope and love. 



15 



Guides to the Higher Life 

Tanuarv 28 The . secret of P r °g ress is in 
J y striking contrasts. We must 

see something beyond and above us before 
we can undertake to strive for it. The gift 
of vision is the condition of advancement. 
The business man must have the secret of 
the larger success before he can lay his 
plans of achievement. Columbus had the 
vision of a new land before he sailed in his 
ships. The sculptor has a vision of the 
ideal of beauty before he puts the chisel 
to the rough marble. The poet hears the 
songs of the Muses before he puts his pen 
to the paper. Well did the old sage exclaim, 
" Where there is no vision the people 
perish." Where there is no vision of char- 
acter there will be no great achievement. 

T Unexpected joys will sud- 

•* y 9 denly come to us ; may we use 

them temperately and with gratitude. Hid- 
den sorrows will stand revealed to us ; may 
we gaze at them steadily, with neither doubt 
nor fear. 

* Beauty inspires us with 

•* ^ 3 enthusiasm by luring us on 

and on to something that has in it the 
potency of perfection. We soon lose inter- 
est in all work that can not be made beauti- 
ful, and it turns into drudgery on our hands. 
This woman makes a drudgery of keeping 
her house; this other holds before her the 
idea of beautifying her home, and every task 
under her touch becomes a work of art. 
16 



Guides to the Higher Life 

I Let us not be as children who 

** ^ 3 stand at the sea's edge, send- 

ing off their toy boats and weeping when 
the tiny playthings are wrecked by the 
waves. Let us guard against shipwreck 
when we may ; but when it comes as a provi- 
dence that we fail to understand, let us not 
cry out as though a strange thing had hap- 
pened, or despair, or yield to any bitterness, 
but let us walk straight on as those who 
trust God and are not afraid. There 
will come the expected loneliness, there will 
come the expected weariness, there will 
come the expected failure; but at the last 
will come the morning, and a voice whisper- 
ing to us, " It is the Lord." 

February i Ma ^ ™ e £° into a11 °F dark " 
J est pilgrimages, anxious not 

to change Thy perfect will but only to do 

and to bear it worthily. 

Give us the eternal patience that waiteth 
in faith and is strong. 

February 2 ^ en ^ ave °^ en succeeded in 
y evading the penalties attached 
to the transgression of the civil law. They 
have tried to deceive themselves into believ- 
ing that they could evade the penalties 
attached to the transgression of the moral 
law. Be not deceived; God is not mocked. 
For in the realm of the moral order of 
things, whatsoever a man soweth that shall 
he also reap. 

17 



Guides to the Higher Life 

February i Th ? world . of which y° n com " 
y * plain so bitterly is not God's 

world; it is a world of your own diseased 
mind's forming, enswathed by the atmos- 
phere of your own bitter spirit. In spite of 
your complaints God's world is full of 
beauty and goodness; but that world is 
veiled by your own imaginings. All this 
dulness and dreariness is not in the world 
but in yourself. Create anew your own 
mind and the world will become new. 

p , We are restless, dissatisfied, 

e ruary 4 oftentimes unhappy, and we 

vainly imagine it is money or influence or 
popularity that would content us. It is 
something deeper than all that which we 
need, it is God. Sowing to the flesh will 
give us a harvest that may satisfy a certain 
part of our nature. It can never satisfy 
that spirit part of us that finds its life in 
loving fellowship with men and in holy com- 
munion with God. 

„ , Uninspiring is the task of 

e ruary 5 directing oneself by precepts. 
The sailor who is set to steer the ship by 
compass gets the range of some star, then 
turns from the compass and steers with his 
face to the heavens above. Men have always 
made wretched work of steering by the com- 
pass of the moral law ; they need the inspira- 
tion of some star, the guiding light of some 
personal saviourhood. 
18 



Guides to the Higher Life 

February 6 Tbere are P eo P le who think 
y it a kind of wickedness to 

yield themselves to the emotions stirred by 
a contemplation of the beautiful ; they deem 
it a sin to give expansion to those instincts 
for beauty and cravings for pleasure, which 
God himself breathed into the soul, and 
which are as much a part of man's religious 
life as is the instinct of prayer itself. Never 
has the attempt been made to separate 
beauty and religion, with any other result 
than the depriving art of religious inspira- 
tion and the depriving religion of that 
adornment of beauty without which it never 
lays hold of people of intelligence and 
refinement. 

February 7 You 1 ? lust serve either Christ, 
* ' the highest man in you, or 

self, the lowest man in you. 

Send Thy gospel, as a sweet-singing 
angel, to charm us into Thy great and 
glorious service. 

Fehr g We need the world to develop 

y our nature and to perfect us, 
and there may be times when we need to 
deny or reject the world for this same great 
end. To take a material view of life is wise 
and right, but to take a purely material 
view is degrading and must result in the 
destruction of our highest powers. 

19 



Guides to the Higher Life 

February Q If y0U desire a plant to grow 
y y and attain to beauty, you take 

it out into the sunshine and let the rains 

wash it and the winds blow upon it. If 

you wish a soul to grow and attain to 

strength and beauty, you take it forth into 

the world of hopes and defeats and teach 

it to look to God that his love may shine 

upon it. Then battling storms only make it 

strong and floods only cleanse it from 

impurities. 

February 10 When you have successfull y 
y run the gamut of the ten 

commandments, you have only arrived at 

the point where your Christian life is to 

begin. 

Mav we be blameless and beautiful in 
character, every faculty performing its 
appointed task; may our lives be as har- 
monious as the stars in their courses and 
full of usefulness to our fellow-men. 



.p - We must worship the divin- 

y est thing we know. That 

divinest thing is love. We know love only 
as it unfolds itself toward perfection within. 
This is God creating us in his own image. 
This is the uncovering of the Christ, and 
that Christ in us becomes the hope of our 
perfected glory. Not the human man but 
the hidden man is the pledge of our divinity. 

20 



Guides to the Higher Life 

p , One of the greatest needs of 

^ the world is the need of men 

who will reveal the possibilities of humanity. 

Only the sacrifice of self in the interest 
of some cause that stands for God's will to 
a man — only this is heroic. 



■p , We live in a spiritual world 

y 3 of which we have too little 
realization. The very atmosphere of life 
is full of unseen forces. The very power 
that we need — none other than the life of 
God — is pressing in upon us from every 
side, and like the fishes that cried out to 
know where flowed the sea, or like the birds 
that went flying everywhere, inquiring 
where they might find the air, we do not 
know how to avail ourselves of this unseen 
power. So much of the weariness of life 
would be prevented, counteracted, overcome, 
if only we could learn how to wait on the 
Lord, how to keep heart and mind open to 
the inflowing currents of refreshing power, 
even while the hand is performing its 
appointed task. 



February 14 He 'P us to live da ^ h \ da ?> 

J ^ unfolding our natures, 

growing wiser and better, as we change 
time into life and daily work into beautified 
character. 

21 



Guides to the Higher Life 

February i * There is some thing radically 
y *> wrong with a personal 
affection for a loved one, unless it leads the 
soul toward the final ideal of universal 
sympathy with all God's creation. 



February 16 To be ± Christian does not 
J mean that one is to camp 

down on the explored plain of ethical cer- 
tainty; it means that one is pledged to 
spiritual adventure; that he is to fight his 
way into the dark continents of the world's 
sin and misery; that he is to breast the 
gales that sweep the greater deeps of human 
passion ; that, like the knights of olden time, 
he is to decline no contest from which he 
may win honor for his Lord and deliverance 
for his brother. 



February 17 Self-denial should not be for 
y ' its own sake but for the sake 
of others. He who would save his life 
must lose it; that is, he who would perfect 
himself must accomplish his high end 
through striving to perfect others. Self- 
denying deeds never strengthen character 
unless they are done for others under the 
impulse of love. 

Help us to know that by spending some 
things we win them; when we spend love, 
pity and truth, increase comes with the 
spending. 

22 



Guides to the Higher Life 

February 18 Every hour of eternit y is 
y full of Thee. There is no 

desert place in life or death where Thou art 

not. 

Because we can dream of nothing higher 
we call Thee love. 



February 19 Match ,°" e hu , man ? fe ' l 

J * care not how strong it may 

be, match it alone against the evil, the temp- 
tation, the storm of life, and it must needs 
be torn up and swept away. A single tree 
on the bare mountain side is stripped and 
broken by the gale; but stand it with a 
thousand of its fellows, and it rocks so 
gently that the birds nestling in its branches 
are undisturbed. If you think that you are 
going out single-handed and alone to meet 
the shock of life's battles and withstand it, 
meet it and still keep your purity and main- 
tain your honor, and live the Christ life 
within your soul, you are as destined to 
defeat as though its cruel clutch were 
already stilling the throbbing of your heart. 

•c, u A thing should not be true 

February 20 , fe , 

J because somewhere men 

have written it down as true, but true 

because of a divine impulse urging us to a 

conviction of its truth. If we can not trust 

our moral perceptions we can trust nothing 

on earth or in heaven. 

23 



Guides to the Higher Life 

February 21 The * ife °* ev u ery ™ an is 
J passed on the shore of some 

Galilee. All are fishers in whose hands God 

has placed certain nets of circumstance. 

Some, like Peter and Andrew, are casting 

into the sea; others, like James and John, 

are mending their nets where the sharp 

rocks have torn them; while still others lie 

idle on the sand, their nets unnoticed at 

their feet. To all men, the toilers and the 

idlers alike, comes the call of the Christ. 

jf h -^- e * s th e greatest man who 

y best serves the world — not 

of necessity, in doing so-called great things, 
but in doing little things in a great way. 
The lordship over all things comes only to 
him who stoops to minister. He to whom 
the world gives much is not truly great; 
only he who gives to the world has found 
the highway to true manliness. 

Not all of us can rule, but no man is 
debarred by circumstances from entering 
into the joy of those who serve. 

t, , O that every one might 

February 23 . . J ^ u 

J u appreciate in some small 

way the strength and efficiency that flow 

into the life of the man who finds his work 

and devotes himself to it with singleness of 

purpose ! With him all the course of nature 

and all the universe of God are fighting. 

24 



Guides to the Higher Life 

■p , However lost we may be in 

•^ ^ the great woods, if only we 
can see the sun we are sure of guidance. 
It is always true to the real direction of 
things. And however we may have strayed 
from the true way of life, if only we look 
upon the life of Jesus we are sure of divine 
guidance, because he was true to the real 
end of human life, to do God's will in the 
world. 

Through the clouds that overhang our life 
there shines enough of truth and certainty 
to enable us to see our duty and to see it 
clearly. 

•p , The deepest need of any 

y 5 individual life is the need of 
companionship. The richness of every life 
is in exact measure to the swelling currents 
of companionship that flow through it. 
What would be all the possessions of this 
vast creation without companionship ? Our 
occasional seasons of solitude are rich 
because they enable us to acquire new value 
for our friends. 

■e* ■. „ „ - To be a man of much faith 

■February 20 , 1 

J means to be a man possessed 

of a deep and searching vision of divine 
realities. Faith is the substance of a man's 
piety, belief the scientific explanation of it. 
Faith is not a dogma of the intellect; it is 
a window of the soul. 

25 



Guides to the Higher Life 

^, . Why wear away your soul? 

February 27 ■& J ii • *• 

J ' Possess yourself in patience. 

Is there not time enough? Do you think 
to correct in a single day a civilization that 
has been in process of evolving for a thou- 
sand ages? Cease being impatient. Look 
at things in their large totality. Be mindful 
of the lessons of creation. Be patient ! Be 
patient ! 

When our longing outruns Thy purpose 
teach us to wait in calm tranquillity. 

February 28 Love j? of , ^er import- 

J ance than knowledge, lhe 

man whose knowledge is ever so profound 
but whose sympathies have not been culti- 
vated, is only half educated, for education 
is the calling out of the whole nature of 
man. There can be no complete knowledge 
without love. You may know the facts of 
physical science, but without a responsive 
heart to the world of men and women all 
the humanities will be sealed to you. 

p , The soul is as sensitive to 

^ 9 beauty as the flower is sensi- 
tive to atmosphere and sunshine; like 
the flower it easily withers and loses its 
fragrance. Let us then wrap the soul in 
beauty to preserve its delicacy; lift up our 
ideals even though the world and our own 
passions strive to drag them down from 
among the stars. 
26 



Guides to the Higher Life 

M , Success, happiness, peace, come 

only through obedience, whole- 
souled and thorough, to the Christ sort of 
life that stoops to serve. 

,-. , He who strives to live in the 

arc 2 lower nature, indifferent to the 
cultivation of his higher powers, is making 
a mistake, together with him who strives 
to live exclusively in the higher nature, 
attempting to crush out of his life those 
appetites and passions that link him to the 
material world. The lives of the sensualist 
and ascetic are alike most pitiable. Christ 
teaches temperance, not abstinence ; regu- 
lation of our desires and appetites, not 
their extinction. The lower powers of our 
nature demand perfecting quite as much 
as the higher powers. We need to learn 
how to pray; we need also to learn how to 
eat and drink, how to breathe and sleep, how 
to work and play — in short, we need to 
know how to use this material world with- 
out abusing it. We are to regard our nature 
as a whole. Every man needs some sense 
of proportion if he would be saved from 
the well-nigh universal habit of over- 
developing one side of his nature at the 
expense of another side. 

yr , We are kin to God. He leads 

3 us even when we do not feel the 
presence of his hand. Never permit your- 
self to doubt it. The Great Companion is 
not dead. 

27 



Guides to the Higher Life 

^ , No man, having put his hand to 

4 the plough, and looking back is 
available for the highest life. He is not the 
sort of material that God can use in build- 
ing up the kingdom of heaven. A man 
never lays hold of the highest life possible 
to any power of his being till he devotes 
himself to it with singleness of purpose. 



March i We are be g innin S to compre- 
** hend that there are many ways 
of approach to God. The astronomer may 
worship through the investigations pursued 
during some silent hour of the night quite 
as much as the kneeling worshiper at the 
altar. The workman who digs by the road 
is spading God's earth and is a coworker 
with God quite as much as he who preaches 
from the pulpit. There is no occupation so 
mean and bare but that religious feeling 
may play around it, as the burnished clouds 
shape and reshape themselves around some 
sacred and ugly peak. 



lvyr , A This day alone belongs to us. 
Shut us into its sacredness and 
give us the vision to see whatever it has of 
divine meaning. 

Help us to listen to Thy gospel with the 
hearing of the soul that no note of its tender 
music may be lost. 

28 



Guides to the Higher Life 

M , The moment a man heroically 

' faces the great moral and relig- 
ious problems of life, with a determination 
to solve them for himself, he will find that 
all the physical forces of the universe are 
fighting with him. In the same way that 
the flowers grow in their blind yearning 
toward the sun, so the spiritual life of man 
unfolds in its yearnings toward the infinite. 



-.yr , ft Every day is a link in the cycle 
chain of life from God around 
to God again. As the chain is dependent 
for its strength on any one of its links and 
as every chain is as strong only as its weak- 
est link, so every life is as strong only as its 
weakest day. 

Every man wins or loses the battle of his 
life at his weak point. 



■** * Creeds are valuable; only shal- 

9 low men ever assert the con- 
trary. But they should never become idols, 
for then they curb the spirit of investigation. 
The mind must have free action in every 
individual, else the religious bondage 
becomes a curse. To walk in the old ways 
of religious thought may be good, but there 
should be no law forbidding men to walk 
apart and to look for new manifestations 
of the truth of Christ. 

29 



Guides to the Higher Life 

yr - It is a fine thing to have the 

courage of your convictions, but 
why must one be forever proclaiming those 
convictions from the house tops ? There are 
so many people who say and do the right 
things in the wrong places, and they are 
quite as much a nuisance as the people who 
say and do the wrong things in the right 
places. Noise is not a self-evident testi- 
mony of moral courage. We should never 
hesitate to show our colors, but we do not 
need to flaunt them constantly. The flag 
that is displayed every day in the year loses 
its significance on special occasions. 



jj* , After we have analyzed all the 

philosophies of life there remain 
only these two ways, one of which every man 
is forced to choose, the life that is lived for 
one's own gratification and the life that is 
lived for the good of other people. 

*/ra*-^v, So long as we feel that religion 

iviarcii 12* . • 1* 1111 

is some mystic and incalculable 

force outside the domain of law, so long we 
shall not set ourselves very seriously to 
becoming religious. But when we recog- 
nize that religion is just the culture of soul 
and as subject to laws as the development 
of the mind, then we shall set ourselves in- 
telligently to the task of becoming religious 
in the true sense. 
30 



Guides to the Higher Life 

,» , Look out through the soul's 

^ window of faith and see God. 
The stars will shine into your eyes if only 
you lift your face to the sky, and God will 
be seen if only you watch for him through 
faith's window. 



■•«. , There is a field of the flesh and 

^ a field of the spirit, and you 
may sow as you choose. There is no power 
in earth or in heaven that can compel you, 
but there is a power that will reckon with 
you, the divine law of your own being; 
and behind that law stands God himself. 

God's salvation will do all that is possible 
with every power and capacity of man's 
being that is left after transgression, but 
even God himself can not make the man 
what he would have been had he not com- 
mitted that sin. 



„ , Gentleness, or kindness, as the 

5 better rendering would be, is a 
virtue full of humility and radiant with 
beauty, a virtue of insight and tact. Have 
you not seen people long-suffering but with- 
out tenderness? These have learned only 
part of the lesson of Christ. To bear the 
burdens and evils of life with patience — 
this is heroic ; to bear them with a patience 
that is kind — this is divine. 

3* 



Guides to the Higher Life 

March 16 P . e0 ^ ma J hol t f Y , pr ° feS " 

sion they please, but so long as 

they fritter away their energies, saying, 

" What shall we eat? " or " What shall we 

drink ? " or " Wherewithal shall we be 

clothed ? " they are practical materialists. It 

would be better that a man should disbelieve 

in God and estimate human life in terms of 

thought and feeling and conscience, than 

that he should believe in God and estimate 

human life in terms of food and clothing 

and stocks and bonds. The materialism that 

we have to fear today is not that of the 

scientist's laboratory but that of the street 

and the shop and the home and the church. 



,» u n Every great hero of faith has 
' been one who stood out against 
the tides of public opinion. 

He who puts the cause above himself is 
the true hero. 



M h R ^ 0( ^ ^ as P* ace d within the soul 

prophecies, infinitely glorious, 
as to what that soul shall be. The mustard 
tree is wrapped up in the tiny seed. The 
man as he shall be, crowned with the diadem 
of his divine manhood, is enfolded within 
the man as he is. 



32 



Guides to the Higher Life 

March iq Gods image is in every man ' 
y obscured by neglect, defaced 

by sin, overlaid by the coverings of time 

and circumstance. It is your work and 

mine to bring out that image, both in our 

own lives and in those of others. 

The measure of a man is not in what he 
is but in what he may become. 



,-. , It is easier to bear the expen- 

March 20 r u 1 

ence of pain when we know 

that there was One who suffered unto 

death and never murmured. We find the 

world hard and are tempted to bitterness 

of spirit and despair, but it is easier to 

overcome the temptation when we know 

that he met the same cruelty and kept his 

soul sweet and strong. 

M , What does the world need 

lvxarcri 21 . 1 <- » <* • ** 

more than forgiveness of sins? 

What is there of which the world stands in 
greater need? Are you free from uneasi- 
ness? Have you no consciousness of hav- 
ing done wrong, not so much perhaps by 
any flagrant act as by the whole temper 
and disposition of your spirit? Have you 
been free from injustice, intemperance, 
envy, hatred, cruelty? Because you do not 
speak openly to every man and woman you 
meet is no evidence that your soul is at 
peace. 

33 



Guides to the Higher Life 

Mar^h oo The Son of Man c o m es to your 

hie and to mine, bearing in his 
pierced hands the gift of peace. " Live for 
God," he would say, " and do his will ; so 
shall you enter into peace." We are not to 
withdraw from the world ; we are to remain 
in the world. We are to give ourselves to 
our work which is to us a blessing only on 
condition that it teaches us how to find 
peace. Our hands are for the toils of life 
but our hearts are for God. 

March 21 Sorrow ma Y be a P? wer in y° ur 
^ life to sanctify, or it may leave 

you harder, more selfish and self-centered. 

There are flowers that shut themselves up 

under the full streaming of the sun; and 

there are men and women whom sorrow 

seems to close to all the radiant influences 

from without. It was not thus God 

designed it. Sorrow should unseal the 

secret sources of one's being, minister holy 

thoughts to the mind and sacred impulses 

of love and loyalty to the heart. 

yr , It would be impossible for one 

^ to cultivate the virtue of pity 
without having passed through the experi- 
ences of misfortune. Only those who have 
suffered are capable of appreciating the 
sufferings of others. We can understand 
in this world only so much as we have 
lived. 

34 



Guides to the Higher Life 

March 2 «; Stand up under your burden as 
5 one who looks life squarely in 
the face and is not afraid. 

It is the struggle of life that gives it 
strength and lends it interest. 

■myr * * Christ's passion and death 
lYiarcn 20 * . .* 1 

bring us up into the large cer- 
tainty of God as our Father; but they do 
more than that, they show us this Father 
as one who pities and forgives us. 



March 27 "^ one doubts tnat perfection 
' is achieved through suffering 
let him turn to a study of the life of Jesus 
of Nazareth. Can you not see how every 
one of his experiences of suffering minis- 
tered to the strengthening and perfecting of 
his character? Without poverty would he 
have known the needs and sufferings of the 
poor? Without frailness of constitution 
would he have been able to enter into a 
realization of the meaning of pain to those 
who were afflicted ? Because he was home- 
less he understood and pitied the outcast; 
his isolation threw him back upon himself 
and developed within him the virtue of self- 
reliance ; out of temptation he came to the 
mastery of all his powers ; and in the varied 
experiences of the passion week he rose at 
last to the final perfection possible in this 
life. 

35 



Guides to the Higher Life 

iwr u o Jesus is the world's greatest 
March 28 r «. a, 4. 1 

hero, so great that unless a 

man is morally and spiritually heroic him- 
self, he is incapable of appreciating the hero- 
ism of Jesus. To stand before that sublime 
figure and see nothing transcendently heroic 
in it, is to stand under the shame of our own 
moral and ethical unheroism. 



iv/Tot-^ nr% No man ever triumphantly met 
* a moral issue in the arena of 
life without having previously met and 
solved that issue in the silence of solitude. 
The only way to meet a crisis is to go out 
with armor girded and close, and not wait in 
unpreparedness till the crisis comes to you. 

The first star of evening looked upon a 
day's accomplishment because the last 
rays of the morning star fell on a face 
uplifted in prayer. 

jjr , There is no other law for any 

3 human soul than that of loyalty 
to the world of men and women with whom 
one has to do. A false man is a disloyal 
man; a true man is he who never betrays 
a friend. We talk of sin as though it were 
something in the abstract. There never 
was a sin committed since time began that 
did not involve the betrayal of some soul. 
You never did a wrong thing in your life 
without selling somebody who trusted you. 

36 






Guides to the Higher Life 

« , He who goes up to his Calvary 

3 without first passing through 
his Gethsemane will go as goes the cow- 
ard, faithless and faint-hearted. Jesus was 
truly the Son of Man in the storm and 
stress of the world because he was the Son 
of God in the holy experience of some soli- 
tary place. 

A ., No man can listen to Christ's 
P words and not feel the conviction 

growing upon him that this man knew 
God, that he was as conscious of God as he 
was conscious of light. This sweetness of 
God's love filled his life, gave him power, 
lifted him above all temptations and sup- 
ported him in the hours of severe trial, send- 
ing him at last to his death with these words 
on his lips, " Father, into thy hands I com- 
mend my spirit." 

A il Jesus never promised that God 
^ would save men from the evil 

effects of sin. If we have done wrong we 
must bear the pain of it and the punish- 
ment of it. But God will forgive sins; 
more, he has forgiven them, and the cross 
is to us the pledge of that forgiveness. 
Many people confound forgiveness with 
removal of penalty ; but they are quite dif- 
ferent. Forgiveness is oneness of soul and 
character. To know that God has accepted 
us, that we are his children — this is to have 
peace and to enter into forgiveness. 

37 



Guides to the Higher Life 

April 3 EASTER ANTHEM 

Vague shapes of fear that rise upon my 
thought, 
And bring your secret dread 
For all my loved ones dead, 
Go back into the night from whence 

unsought, 
Ye came but to destroy all love has taught ; 
Go back into the night, 
O do not put to flight 
The joys and hopes which cling unto my 
thought. 

And ye bright angels seen in all my dreams, 
Attend me while I weep, 
Speak soft of those who sleep, 

Speak to me of those high and holy themes ; 

Of Him who clothed in heaven's radiant 
beams, 
Ascended from the grave, 
Bound death to be His slave — 

Speak to me of the Christ seen in my dreams. 

Now does my heart rejoice, my lips sing 
praise, 

For love can never die, 

Christ dwells in light on high, 
My songs of triumph unto him I raise ; 
He fills my nights with dreams, with love 
my days. 

O risen life divine, 

The life of heaven mine, 
Ring out, ye Easter bells! ring joyous praise ! 

38 



Guides to the Higher Life 

April 4 UNAFRAID 

I stand amid the thronging fears 
Unmoved by any shape of dread ; 

Through all the conflict of the years 
I know the way that I am led ; 

Dauntless I walk as one who hears 

That Christ has risen from the dead. 

I climb, with weary feet and slow, 

The toilsome path on which He bled; 

Unmarked my footsteps as I go, 

Darkness and storm around my head; 

The heights are bathed in light, I know, 
For Christ has risen from the dead. 

I will not cry against my fate, 

Nor doubt that I shall reach the goal; 
Fearless I stand, content to wait, 

Assured the clouds must backward roll, 
The smiting of the storm abate, 

And Christ arise within my soul. 



39 



Guides to the Higher Life 

am A sense of immortality intensifies 
P 5 one's realization of life. To know 
that you can not die is to know that life is 
grandly worth the living. To know that 
you can not die makes it of some real use 
to fight against temptation. He who 
believes that life is of a few years and that 
at last man is buried as the brute has little 
incentive to struggle against sin. But put 
into a man's mind the immortal thought, and 
you lift him out of the life of the animal 
into the life of conscious sonship with God. 



* .j fi Make us strong to do and bear 
P Thy holy will. And when the 

storm cometh hide us in the cleft of Thy 
rocks, and lead us again under Thy peace- 
ful heavens, unharmed and unafraid. 



a nr -i m Every one of us has in addition to 
P ' his five senses, a sixth sense which 
we call faith. It is the vision of the soul. 
By faith we see God. The light of the 
stars shines upon our eyes if only we lift 
our faces to the spangled sky at night ; and 
he who trusts God enough to lift up his 
face in spirit will find that God shines upon 
his inner life with resistless power. 



40 



Guides to the Higher Life 

A .j ^ The difficulty with our lives is 
P that we do not hold things in 

their true proportions, that we have a wrong 
perspective. The little things made great 
and the great things made small — is not 
this the story of many an overburdened, 
fussy, troubled and troublesome life? 
Either our vision is telescopic, magnifying 
out of true proportion, or our vision is 
microscopic, minimizing out of true pro- 
portion. What we need is a normal vision 
that shall get a true perspective through 
life's details to its real issues. 



* .| God never withholds from those 
" " who have developed the power of 
appropriation. 

May we look upward and see the angels 
of Thy mercy descending to minister to us. 



A ., Only strong beliefs can make 

P strong men. The mind craves 

light as the heart hungers for emotion. To 
say that religion is of the heart alone is to 
forget that man is a being who thinks as 
well as one who feels. In a well-balanced 
religious life clear statements of truth are 
as necessary as fine impulses of emotion. 
As a man thinketh in his mind so is he in all 
the outpourings of his life. 



4i 



Guides to the Higher Life 

A il Trust your own intuitions. We 

P are not orphans in the world. 

Our lives are not the brief sport of chance. 
That God's spirit watches over the soul, 
molding its character and directing its des- 
tiny, is apparent to him who puts his trust 
in that spirit. 

a nr'l ^ * s no * a ^ wa y s possible to com- 

P pel others to serve you, but no 

power on earth can hinder you from serving 
others. 

May we know more and more the 
blessedness of those who live to serve. 



A il Once a year there comes over 

^ 3 many of us a passion to get close 
to the ground, to dig in the soil, to culti- 
vate a garden. I wish that there might 
come over people the passion to cultivate 
the garden of the soul, to get down close 
to the ground of our common and natural 
instincts toward the good, to dig in the 
soil of our deepest hopes and aspirations. 
There is no passion in life that so lays hold 
of you, when once you are awakened to 
it, as the passion to cultivate the graces of 
the soul. No miser ever shows such keen 
zest in adding dollar upon dollar to his 
hoard, as the man into whose soul Jesus 
has flashed the vision of his life shows 
keenness in adding virtue to virtue. 
42 



Guides to the Higher Life 

. ., Only one thing in this world 

P 4 ever brings a man peace; that 

one thing is conformity to the will of God, 

which will stands eternally manifest in the 

Christ type of life. 

Being at one with the will of God, may 
we move harmonious with the course of all 
things. 

a -1 - It i s the eye that makes the 
P ** beauties of the world; it is the 
ear that creates melodies of sound; it is 
the mind that makes the world in which 
we live a world of God and not one of blind 
chance. Life takes its coloring from our 
own thoughts. The very world is formed 
under the molding touch of our own expe- 
rience. To the pure all things are pure, to 
the gloomy all things are gloomy, to the 
contented all things breathe the spirit of 
content, to the selfish all people are selfish, 
to the wicked all things seem wicked, to 
the virtuous all things partake somewhat 
of virtue. 

a -i * The moment we begin to care 
P for ourselves so that we have no 

thought for the larger self we begin to die 
like a girdled tree. 



43 



Guides to the Higher Life 

A il The grandeur of the human soul 

" 'is something beyond the power 
of language to describe. We may mar its 
beauty by impure thoughts; we may tear 
down its pillars of strength by evil actions ; 
the gloom of sin may wrap itself about the 
broken architecture of that noble temple 
which God designed; the wild beasts of 
passion may take possession of the ruins; 
yet through all we feel the presence of that 
indescribable something that we call the God 
in man. Only when we catch through the 
broken architecture of our own human life 
a vision of the noble edifice that we might 
have builded, do we enter into the pathetic 
tragedy concealed in those words of Jesus, 
"And the rain descended and the floods 
came, and the winds blew, and smote upon 
that house; and it fell." 

Anril 8 ^ * s sens ible, rational and bibli- 
^ cal never to give up anything 

good in this world unless it is to the end of 
acquiring something better. 

Anril in ^^ e 1S ma de U P en tirely of these 
^ 9 two things, desire and fulfilment. 
Our very development and growth are de- 
pendent on our desires and on their normal 
satisfaction. A desire that is natural and 
true and divine has a legitimate right, in the 
heavenly economy of things, to enter some 
day into the realization of its fulfilment. 

44 



Guides to the Higher Life 

A ., We have no right as individuals 

pru 20 tQ an y p ract j ce w hich, if univer- 
sally applied, would tend to destroy society 
and degrade manhood. 

Be this our task henceforth, to make clean 
and radiant the robes of our inner life. 



A ., Truth changes the world, but 

P not truth that stands alone; it 

must express itself through personality. 
Words are mighty agencies, winged with 
good or bad ; but only as they are vitalized 
by the principles of the gospel do they 
become a life-giving power. Personality 
must be charged with a divine quality, else 
it has no power over the common life of 
men. It is useless to direct our energies to 
high purposes, unless our faculties and all 
the forces of our nature have been raised 
to their highest power. 



Anril 2 ^ 1S not ^ t ' le Physical resources 
^ of nature that this world is to be 

brought to God ; it is not primarily through 
a highly developed mentality; it is through 
that subtle spirit power that men call love — 
a something that is made up of the powers 
of kindness and patience and benevolence 
and forgiveness and humility. 



45 



Guides to the Higher Life 

April 2<* These little things that go to 
^ ** make up life's daily task have 
their moral interpretations. The spiritual 
aspect of life is no less manifest in its work 
than in its worship. 

We thank Thee for this day which is full 
of golden opportunities to show forth the 
Christ life among men. 



Anril ia ^ ^ ou ^ n ^ religion a supernat- 
^ ^ ural thing you will likely wait 
for some supernatural revelation or mani- 
festation of power. But when you see relig- 
ion to be as purely natural as any other 
force of one's being, simply the develop- 
ment of those Christian virtues that are 
latent in every soul, then are you likely to 
inquire more carefully concerning the laws 
in accordance with which those virtues are 
brought to their full maturity. Your task 
is to arrange the conditions; God has 
arranged for the result. 



A ., There is only one way to live 

P n 25 true to one's self — live true to 
God. To live true is to be pure and just. 
To live true is to love and serve one's fel- 
low-men. To live true is to rise in heart 
and mind into oneness with the love and the 
purpose of the Father. 



46 



Guides to the Higher Life 

A .. fi To love things, but to love them 
Aprii 20 - n guc j i a wa ^ as never to arr ive 

at their hidden meaning and never to form 
any attachment to their essential reality — 
this is to miss utterly the whole secret of 
life. 

* ., There is only one thing more ter- 

P ' rible than insanity of the mind, 

and that is insanity of the soul that results 

from the abnormality of an irreligious life. 

a -l o Temperance means that the 
P higher man is to stand guard 

over the lower man ; one part of the man is 
to master and control another part of him. 
It is this virtue more than any other that 
constitutes manliness. Physical powers and 
intellectual gifts are things not to be 
despised in casting up the sum of manhood. 
But God wills that the spirit should rule; 
that love should overcome hatred, that joy 
should cast out bitterness, that peace should 
reign instead of passion, that long-suffering 
should take the place of anger, that gentle- 
ness should shame brutality, that goodness 
should triumph over evil, that faith should 
conquer doubt and cynicism, that meekness 
should destroy pride, and that temperance — 
king of the virtues as love is the queen — 
that temperance should co-ordinate and con- 
trol all the powers and capacities of our 
being. 

47 



Guides to the Higher Life 

Anril 20 R emem ber that your conscience, 
P 9 what I would call the moral 
faculty, is lord over all and is to rule in 
your nature absolutely. You must not 
question its authority. It will never fail to 
do the work required of it. 



Aoril qo ^ e k eau ty °^ ^e flowers is 
P 3 given to point us to an inner 
and unseen glory ; the revelation of the 
spiritual is ours to the end that our out- 
ward and material life may be purified. 

All within us that wars against the spirit, 
destroy. All within us that is potential 
divinity, do Thou nourish and bring to 
maturity. 

•jyr What is science, O thou God of 

y nature, but another name for 
truth, and all truth is of God. In the beauty 
of the flower we rejoice that we have such 
delicate interpretation of thy character. 
The song of the bird thrills us with the 
unspoken secret of love. The winds are 
messengers of thy spirit and in the moan- 
ing of the sea there is the vast suggestive- 
ness of mystery. O God, thou art a great 
God, yet infinite in patience, careful of every 
slightest detail concerning our lives. Lift 
us up to a fuller comprehension of the 
majesty and beauty of thy character. Grant 
to us wider definitions of thy thought. 
48 



Guides to the Higher Life 

■jyj. The voyage of life is one of storms 

y and high seas, and it can result in 
nothing else than disaster to him who is 
without a sure chart and compass. Every- 
man who looks life squarely in the face 
realizes this truth; every man, in his seri- 
ous moments, knows that life is a serious 
business. He knows that he needs the high- 
est counsel as to how he shall shape his 
course through tempestuous experiences. 
He knows that drifting means shipwreck; 
yet in spite of his own knowledge and the 
disastrous experiences of others, he contin- 
ues to play with the currents and to per- 
mit himself to be whirled about by the 
aimless eddies. 

May q Long-suffering — what a strong, 
y * deep word it is ! How it lifts us 
out of the petty trivialities of life ! First to 
love, then out of love, in spite of everything, 
to find joy, and because of that joy to be 
patient and long-suffering — this is true 
heroism. 

Mav a Sometimes the light fails us and 
^ 4 the windows of the soul are dark- 
ened. In such an hour we are not to close 
them; rather look forth the more eagerly, 
for though the common objects of our 
familiar landscape may be blurred by the 
shadow, if only we look up we shall see 
that the very darkness has brought out the 
stars. 

49 



Guides to the Higher Life 

y. The universal law is the law of 

y 5 service to those about us. There 
is no method by which you can hope to 
penetrate to the inner sanctuary of the holy 
temple of love other than the method of 
walking beneath the archway of service. 

May all our deeds of service be in har- 
mony with Thy will concerning us. 



Mav 6 ^ e t * me ^ as come to sto P ca tti n S 
^ a man good simply because of his 

profession or because of a peculiar tone of 
voice which he uses in his prayers. The 
good man is he who doeth good. Seeds 
can not live in a good soil without spring- 
ing up. It is a necessity of nature that a 
good tree shall bud and blossom and bear 
fruit. And it is a necessity of man's spirit- 
ual nature that goodness shall find an outlet 
in deeds of justice and mercy. 



»j The religion that nourishes itself 

^ ' at the fountains of human wisdom 
must of necessity be circumscribed, but the 
religion that constantly renews itself in 
those fountains of spiritual power opened 
in the heart's deepest experience, knows 
nothing of the limitations of time or place. 



50 



Guides to the Higher Life 

y, 8 To the inspired heart the realities 
y of the spirit world are self-evident. 
Would we be sure of God, we are not 
to go to the books that seek to define his 
attributes. We are to turn to our own 
deepest experiences and trust them; trust 
also the experiences of other men better and 
stronger than ourselves. Especially are we 
to trust the experiences of those seers of 
old whose clear visions of the eternal world 
are described in the pages of the Bible. 



I^r God sent us into life that by trial 

^ ^ and testing we might forge our 
character. 

Let each hard lesson seem to us the very 
hand of God changing us into his own 
image. 

tut v TO Every home is one of two things : 
^ a home of coarse desire for 

material things, of vain pride and foolish 
class distinctions, of attachment to the out- 
ward and transitory and unreal; or it is a 
home where the world and the things of 
the world are used in a high ministry to 
imperishable ideals, a home in which are 
inculcated the principles of morality and 
religion, a home in which the real attach- 
ment is to " the inner, the eternal, the 
true." 

5i 



Guides to the Higher Life 

,-. No man builds his faith on what 

y he can not believe but on what 

he does believe. The doubts that assail 
you will prove to be your best friends. Do 
not fly from them in fear ; face them like a 
man and wrestle with them. Never for one 
moment allow yourself to believe a thing 
because you want to believe it. Prove all 
things; hold fast only to that which you 
find to be true and good. If there are only 
two or three things in the whole realm of 
religious belief of which you are absolutely 
sure, you are infinitely better off than he 
who holds to a hundred statements not one 
of which he has tested and proved. A faith 
that has not cost such hours of intellectual 
and spiritual wrestling as to wring the best 
blood out of your veins, is not worth the 
paper on which it is given expression. 



« Why stand gazing up into heaven 

^ as though you could bring down 

the secrets of God from beyond the clouds? 
Face the responsibilities of daily life, and 
out of your faithfulness and loyalty to your 
appointed task will come God's answer to 
your question. 



« Continue to wait on the Lord, 

a y x 3 though you have never seen the 
passing vision of his glory. 

52 



Guides to the Higher Life 

jyr There is a deal of stubbornness 

^ 4 in this world that passes for moral 
courage. It insists that you are a coward 
unless you march under its banner. There 
is a deep distinction between courage and 
foolhardiness. To make a fool of oneself is 
as bad as to be a coward. How many men 
have been rushed into enterprises against 
their judgment simply because they feared 
the world would call them cowardly. There 
is a sort of combativeness passing as moral 
courage which is wholly unworthy to be 
called such. 



^ It is on earth that the new 

y 5 heaven is to be revealed to us. 
We are to be Christian men and women, 
not because we are going to die but because 
we are going to live. 



«-. fi Life is a school, but it should not 
^ be considered an end in itself. 

It is the training that is to fit a man for 
some higher sphere of usefulness. Never, 
until you begin to think of life in this way, 
as God's school, will all these mysteries 
and miseries and apparent inequalities begin 
to resolve themselves into some rational 
order. To the man who comes to view life 
'as an education, all things, good and bad, 
have some divine meaning. 

53 



Guides to the Higher Life 

Mav i7 Every life is fixed at the center 
y ' of many concentric circles. First 
is the circle of one's own individuality; 
next comes the home circle; then that of 
school and college; after that are the cir- 
cles of community, state and nation ; finally, 
the vast stretching circles of the world; 
and beyond, the limitless expanse of the 
unknown. Every thought and action, 
every impulse and emotion, every aspira- 
tion and desire, trembles and vibrates 
through all the delicate and infinitely 
stretching net into the center of which your 
own individual life is woven. 



■jyr £ Peace is not freedom from strife 
^ but freedom in strife — the free- 

dom of those who know the truth and by 
it are made free. It is the life at harmony 
with itself. 

May we rise far above the discords of 
earth into the very calm of heaven where 
peace reigneth. 

« Time does so many things. It 

^ ^ takes from us our strength; it 
also gives it back again. Time makes all 
things right. It clears up misunderstand- 
ings; it heals wounds. Time tries our 
friendships that it may be determined 
whether they are welded in love or con- 
ventionality. 
54 



Guides to the Higher Life 

■«-. God waits for the unfolding of 

" each grace, touching every life 

with infinite care, knowing, as he does, the 
sacredness of that which he has created. 

May we recognize the touch of God on 
the soul and rejoice. 



^ The saddest thing in life is to see 

^ the window of hope shut. When 

desire goes out of the eye and longing out 
of the heart, man might as well die. As 
long as there is life there is hope; as long 
as there is hope there is life. However we 
may be shut in by circumstances, if only 
the window of hope is open we do not 
despair. 

•jyr If we could have a community of 

^ those really believing in these 

things — that God is a Father and rules 
today; that Christ is the eternal type of a 
divine manhood ; that goodness can never be 
defeated ; that the Bible is our sure guide in 
all that pertains to the spirit life, and that 
the great hopes and experiences of the 
holiest men are not dreams, idle illusions 
unworthy man's supremest effort, but eter- 
nal verities leading to immortal blessedness 
— if only we could have those around us 
with such a faith as this, what more of 
heaven would we ask ? 



55 



Guides to the Higher Life 

^ Every soul is born to relations 

y 2 3 with every thing and every being 
that exists. The evolution of a soul means 
the awakening to a recognition of those 
relationships and the assuming of the duties 
that they involve. The man who is broad- 
est in heart and mind is he who has come 
into the largest recognition of his relation- 
ship to the world of created things and 
beings. The culture of mind and soul has 
not been perfected in any large way till we 
have entered into a recognition of the rela- 
tionships existing between our soul and the 
wide world of men about us and the infinite 
God above. 



y. The greatest burden in life is the 

y ^ burden of life when it is not filled 

with a wholesome amount of responsibility. 

May we learn how to interpret our place 
amid all the influences, the needs and the 
duties of the day. 



•■-. God has not finished his work ; he 

^ ** is making perfect his creation 
today. We are working with him, working 
as common drudges, as hirelings under the 
lash, or working as artists work, with the 
ideal in our minds, endeavoring to fashion 
our lives after the pattern shown us in the 
mount. 

56 



Guides to the Higher Life 

Mav 26 ^ l°fty P ur P ose consecrates the 
y humblest duty. The important 

thing is not the kind of service but the kind 
of spirit with which it is performed. God 
finishes the flower as perfectly as he does 
the forest. The whole vast scope of heaven 
may reflect itself in a dewdrop. 



Mav 27 ^ ne serves ky being, another 
^ ' serves by doing; one serves his 
own life, another serves the life of some 
one else. In this world of God's every 
honest effort acts and reacts, so that an act 
put forth here is applied everywhere. 

May we find in every opportunity for help 
Thy heavenly call, and may we learn to 
make real in human life and real in human 
institutions our visions and our ideals. 



iyr R The supreme message of science 
^ to this age is, that all nature is 

on the side of the man who tries to rise. 
Evolution, development, progress are not 
only on her program, they are her pro- 
gram. For all things are rising, all worlds, 
all planets, all stars and suns. An ascend- 
ing energy is in the universe and the whole 
moves on with one mighty idea and antici- 
pation. The aspiration in the human mind 
is but the evolutionary tendency of the 
universe becoming conscious. 

57 



Guides to the Higher Life 

„ This is a truth that searches out 

a5r 29 the noblest instincts, the loftiest 
aspirations, the holiest desires, and satisfies 
them — this truth that we may be forever 
living up into the realization of a higher 
and more spiritual life. If we would be 
sure of the eternal life we must make it out 
of the experience of today. If we would 
possess in our soul's being the unwavering 
certainty of immortal life, we must go forth 
into the world of our commonplace experi- 
ence and strive to live as though we were 
immortal. 



Mav qo ^ e sna ^ ne ver think of death 
^ 3 aright until we think of it as a 
great, glad gain ; and never, until we cease 
thinking of it as a loss, will it minister unto 
us the divine sweetness of the Christ con- 
solation. 

Life is enriched and not impoverished by 
the passing of those who nobly live. 



« All that is most sacred in life, 

Ma y 3 1 most tender in our human rela- 
tions, is rooted in the divine compassion. 
As one catches a ray of sun and through 
the prism breaks it into many beautiful 
colors, so the rays of God's love are caught 
by human hearts and broken into holy 
virtues. 

58 



Guides to the Higher Life 

_ Only he who has the eye of an 

J un artist really sees the form and 

color of a rose; only he who has the eye 
of a spiritual artist really sees that subtler 
beauty of the rose, which lies about and per- 
meates it as does the atmosphere. The 
highest beauty is the answering of an 
unseen and divine something without to an 
unseen and divine something within. 

May the beauty of the Lord be upon us, 
making us lovely in his presence and strong 
in his grace. 

Tune 2 ^ e are nv ^ n §" * n a vel T practical 
and material world, and it is out 
of this world-stuff, if I may coin the phrase, 
that we are to gain our discipline. There 
is no way of perfecting yourself as a farmer 
except by working in and with the soil ; 
there is no way of perfecting yourself as a 
Christian except by using the world — using 
the world and not abusing it. This matter 
of perfecting ourselves is a very real and 
everyday sort of thing, and the tools by 
which we fashion our characters are worn 
by the handling of many hands. 

j The man who reaches down his 

•* 3 hand to another not only discovers 

to that other man some higher worth, but 
through his very act of helpfulness gains 
for himself a diviner estimate. 

59 



Guides to the Higher Life 

, There is something within us that 

jun 4 riches out an( j fastens to the 

world; there is also something that reaches 
up to God. The windows of our nature 
overlook the common objects of life; but 
it was also intended that the soul should 
look out and up through the pure night 
and see the stars. The judgment that we 
call down on ourselves results from the fact 
that we give our lives to the satisfying of the 
lower needs and neglect the higher needs. 
It is the same old temptation that the young 
Christ fought out in spirit on the mountain 
side, this everlasting temptation to thrust 
away the higher good for the lower gratifi- 
cation. ' ; 

T Religion is not the introduction of 

•* * something new in human experi- 

ence but the unfolding of our natural 
capacity. The soul has often gone forth in 
its quest for God and come back sad and 
despondent, only to find by some deepening 
experience that it had taken God with it and 
brought him back. 

, - Every experience of life will lead 

June 5 us to God if only we let love lead 
us. We fail because we have such little 
faith in love. We trust power, or wisdom, 
or fame, or fear; but while we recognize 
that the face of love is one of extreme 
beauty, we fail to see the lines of strength 
and thus make the age-long mistake of not 
choosing to walk with love. 
60 



Guides to the Higher Life 

T Everything has its price and the 

J ' price buys that thing, not some- 

thing else. The miner who swings all day 
the heavy pick is rewarded by the strong 
arm, and he who is not willing to pay the 
miner's price must not expect the miner's 
reward of strength. The scholar who has 
given all his life to intense mental applica- 
tion is rewarded by the richly stored intel- 
lect, and he who is not willing to pay the 
scholar's price must not expect the scholar's 
reward. The Christian who has given him- 
self to the search for God and who accus- 
toms himself to make every experience of 
life his spiritual teacher is rewarded by an 
unwavering faith, and he who is not willing 
to pay the Christian's price must not expect 
the Christian's reward of faith. 

j o Always remember when you make 
•* your appeal to facts, that you lay 

yourself under obligation to consider all the 
facts. 

Tn e It is from the secret experiences 
** of his own nature that man draws 

forth the revelations of spiritual truth. 
Without capacities for receiving the divine 
life no divine life would be possible to us ; 
for of what advantage is that substance of 
being to which we have no native affinities 
to ally us? We can never know the God 
without till we have awakened to a con- 
sciousness of the God within. 

61 



Guides to the Higher Life 

j One of the strange things about 

■* life is the way in which people 

persist in believing that they may possess 
themselves of joy without entering into the 
life of Christ. Only those who love find 
happiness. To find joy in our work we 
must love it; to find joy in nature we must 
be lovers of nature; to find peace in the 
midst of discipline we must love God who 
ordains that discipline and whose spirit 
alone can reconcile us to it. 



T To make two blades of grass 

Tune ii u 1 

J grow where only one grew 

before is as sacred as to preach a sermon 

or to perform an act of charity. 

Bind us with loyalty to every act of 
service that we undertake, and help us to 
undertake yet more and more. 



T No life ever shines resplendent 

June 12 tin . t has caught the vision of 

Him who through suffering was made our 
righteousness. The roses bloom and the 
birds sing because somewhere in the uni- 
verse are fountains of life and fragrance 
and song. We love because somewhere 
are eternal fountains of divine love. We 
love because He first loved us. 



6a 



Guides to the Higher Life 

T So long as a man considers his 

•* ^ own i t j n iif e an( j accustoms 

himself to an enumeration of his own bless- 
ings, just so long has he much for which 
to thank God. It is when he turns from 
himself and begins to dwell enviously upon 
the good fortune of his neighbor that 
trouble begins. He sees what he regards 
as exceptional blessings in the life of his 
neighbor, but the difficulties and cares that 
those blessings involve — these things he 
does not see and therefore does not con- 
sider. The moment you turn your vision 
to another man's life you see his blessings 
but you miss his cares. Most of the unhap- 
piness in your life arises from that vicious 
habit into which you have fallen of com- 
paring yourself with others whom you deem 
more fortunate. 

Tune ia -^ ver y * aw °f which we have any 
•* * knowledge is supreme only until 

it comes into conflict with some higher law. 

Tune ic Education comprehends all that 
** 5 relates to the development of the 

five senses, the perfecting of the muscular 
and nervous systems, the improvement of 
the powers of understanding, the training 
to an appreciation of the beautiful in art 
and nature and the cultivation of the moral 
instincts. The highest aim of education is 
manhood and womanhood. 

63 



Guides to the Higher Life 

t«™ T c The richest friendships come 
June id x , ,. i • -, r 

J from trusting people in spite of 

themselves. It is better to trust twelve 

men and find one a traitor and eleven true 

than to trust none. 

Keep Thou every door of our heart and 
let no enemy enter therein and let no friend 
depart. 

T When once we have heard 

•* ' Christ's call to discipleship we 

can never quite escape it. The love that he 
quickens may die down through faithless- 
ness, but I think it never quite goes out on 
the altar of one's life. 



T 18 Christianity is the art of learn- 

•' ing to be faithful to other people 

in the same way that Jesus was faithful. 
To be loyal as he was loyal means to be 
loyal in spite of everything. Yet the hard- 
est thing a man was ever asked to do is to 
stand forth in this world of selfishness and 
bitter cruelty, an example of simple, Christ- 
like friendliness. To stand by a man 
with loyalty and faithfulness after he has 
betrayed, denied, proved utterly false to 
you, is the divinest thing that was ever 
done on this earth. 



6 4 



Guides to the Higher Life 

j The world has never seen such 

•* ^ another lover of men as Jesus of 

Nazareth. His love was courageous; it 
dared to rebuke. His love was tender; it 
stooped to comfort. His love was redemp- 
tive; it sought to purify. His love was 
divine — so divine that it could forgive 
even to the uttermost. 



y When once we have learned the 

•* music of life, how wondrous it is ! 

May our hearts be attuned to the holi- 
ness and harmony of Thy kingdom. 

j The purpose of the best educa- 

•* tional work is to make the very 

most of the material in hand ; it is not pri- 
marily to pave the way to success; it is to 
make us worthy of any success and strong 
to meet any failure. There is a certain kind 
of success for which the student who 
becomes exalted by the ideals of scholar- 
ship is totally unfitted. Education that is 
worthy the name is the transferring of 
emphasis from circumstances to character. 
With that kind of success that is measured 
by circumstances rather than by character, 
all who have begun to taste the joys of 
true culture and have entered into the com- 
panionship of those who have lived in the 
realm of ideals, have no relationship what- 
ever. 

65 



Guides to the Higher Life 

Tune 22 ^ere are two ways of seeking 
J rest, the effort to liberate one- 

self from the exactions of labor, and the 
effort to find one's way into that realm of 
restfulness, where currents of refreshing 
power flow through the soul as steadily as 
tides flow through the sea. The higher 
rest is not periodic but continuous ; not one 
of inactivity but one of equipoise ; not a rest 
of inertia but a rest of balance. However 
fast the great wheel whirls, at the very 
center it is still. In its deepest analysis rest 
is what Jesus called peace of soul, peace in 
the very midst of battle. 

, The mind should not be depend- 

^ 3 ent for happiness on scenes and 

things from without. The soul should be 
so awakened that when no flash comes from 
without it can light up its own recesses and 
turn dens into palaces. 

Happiness comes not from without but 
from within. It comes not from the power 
of possession but from the power of appre- 
ciation. 

, God is imaged forth in this crea- 

june 24 t - on q U j te as trn \y f though not 

with the same fulness, as in the revelation of 
the Christ. To grasp vitally the thought 
that God made the world, makes that world 
a symbol of the perfect heaven wherein 
dwelleth the Most High. 
66 



Guides to the Higher Life 

Tune c ^ e ma ^ h°P e ^at our vacation 
•* ** season will enforce at least this 

one fact: that we shall never make out of 
our characters all that we hope to make out 
of them, till we have found not only our 
work and learned how to do it, but also our 
Bethany and learned how to rest therein; 
learned where we may find God, how to fill 
our lives with all that is full of faith and 
hope and love, with all the instincts and 
aspirations that pertain to the spiritual life, 
so that as we go out again into the midst 
of the world it will not be an effort to lead 
helpful, purposeful lives; we shall walk on 
through the world in such a manner that 
men will somehow feel that God has passed 
that way. 

j fi There can be no rest except that 

•* which is rooted in peace of the 

soul. 

Shut us away from the strife and clamor 
of the world into the infinite peace and 
silence of the eternal love. 



j God's ways are the ways that 

June 27 demand t j me> All things in this 

world that are done well — all the art, all 
the literature, all the beauty, all life's per- 
fection whatever it may be — come to us 
only as the result of labor, labor that has 
been content to wait. 

67 






Guides to the Higher Life 

Tune 28 ^ e h ave toiled so long and earn- 
•* estly at our task, our eyes have 

grown weary and our hands are numb. Are 
we so burdened with the doing of many 
things that we can not heed the invitation, 
" Come ye yourselves apart into a desert 
place, and rest awhile?" Do we fear the 
desert ? Do we shrink from its solitude and 
its silence? Have we not learned that in 
the desert one is always conscious of the 
companionship of the stars ? 



j That which breaks down so many 

•* 9 men is not the work of life but 

its monotonous uniformity; not the strain 
but the steady strain. The workers of the 
world suffer for want of leisure, the idlers 
of the world suffer for want of activity. 
The law of rhythm demands of each its sup- 
plemental quality. A violin that is unstrung 
will emit no music, while a violin that is left 
strung soon loses the fine quality of cadence. 
A cloud is never seen at its best till pierced 
by a sunbeam. Activity never outlines itself 
as a thing divine till it is clothed upon by 
the joyousness of rest. 

j Sometime we shall understand 

^ 3 that the passing weariness from 

without means so little, while the steadiness 
of purpose to wait on the Lord and bide his 
time means everything. 
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Guides to the Higher Life 

T , The hardest thing in this world is 

J y Z to wait. But to make up our 
mind that we are doing: the thing that 
ought to be done, that God in his providence 
has set our life in just the place that he 
would have it, is to enter upon the unknown 
days with the power of the undivided, undis- 
tracted life that rests in God. 



t , If only you could see deep enough 

•* y into the lives of those against 
whom you often murmur with bitterness, I 
think you would find them not more fortu- 
nate than yourselves. I long ago learned 
one lesson that has stood me in good stead 
— never to estimate the blessing and good 
fortune and happiness of a man's life by 
anything that the eye can see. O the tragic 
mistake that the men and women of today 
are making! We are missing the joy and 
satisfaction of that which we have through 
the unheroic and disgraceful craving for 
that which we have not. 



* , Men are glorified and God is glori- 

•* ^ fied in them, in the measure that 
they serve their fellow-men. This, the serv- 
ing our fellow-men, is something possible 
every day and every hour of life. It needs 
no church, no creed, no profession. Where 
you stand in the busy whirl of life, there 
you may serve, there you may act. 

6 9 



Guides to the Higher Life 

j , May those whom we have placed 

•* y 4 j n authority be so filled with the 
divine wisdom that there shall result from 
their leadership the strengthening of the 
people in righteousness. May all things be 
so ordered by their endeavors that truth 
and justice shall prevail, that peace and 
happiness shall bless our beloved land, that 
religion shall be spread abroad and that the 
divine will shall be the standard of our 
national honor. 



j I As soon as you know a thing to 

•* Y ** be ideally true it is your duty to 
stand for it and to make it really true. 

Being obedient to the knowledge and 
vision of today, may we have a larger knowl- 
edge and a more luminous vision tomorrow. 



j , fi When shall we learn that waiting 
J u y on the Lord has not only a spiritual 
but a distinct hygienic value ; that the secret 
of health and of a life of prolonged labor 
is to be found in a man's religiousness? 
Even eagles may be weary, but as they 
mount up, the swift and buoyant currents 
of air bear them easily, so that the flight 
that near earth was laborious, above the 
clouds becomes a joy and a relaxation. 



70 



Guides to the Higher Life 

j , It is not hard to love nature or 

J y 7 ar ^ not hard to be enraptured of 
beauty, not hard to maintain our joyousness 
as we are borne up on wings of poetry and 
music into some imaginary realm of gold. 
But to love men with their hard faces and 
their cold hearts and their grasping hands — 
this is the hardest thing in life. 

T , £ It is a sign of our supremacy in 
J y this creation of God's that at birth 
we are so far away from all ideals of per- 
fection. 

There will come a time when we shall 
be so tuned to the laws of our nature that 
we shall love the things that God loves and 
hate the things that God hates. 

j , Man has within him certain spirit- 

J J 9 ual aspirations and instincts. 
Throughout all the ages he has longed for 
God ; the deepest desire of the human heart 
has always been to find rest in a divine and 
an immortal life. Is it possible that these 
longings can be meaningless? Does the 
child reach out his hand to grasp something 
tangible, while the prayer of the saint is 
sent forth into an empty void? Are not 
these gropings of the soul as sure of the 
corresponding reality that calls them forth 
as the senses are sure of the world of which 
they have cognizance? 

7i 



Guides to the Higher Life 

Tulv 10 Unless this world is the plaything 
J ^ of blind chance there is some 

divine meaning in the breaking into wreck- 
age of the dreamships of the soul. It is not 
for nothing that our ships have been broken. 
There is a spiritual significance in every 
wrecked hope of our lives. 



j , The purpose of a thing will 

•* ^ always be found at the core of 

its nature. If the deepest passion of the 
rosebud is to blossom, then the rosebud 
must have been created to blossom. The 
nature of a thing determines its destiny. 

The real power of life lies in the divinity 
that is developing at the core of our being. 



y , We have come upon an age when 

•* Y men, in their passion for reality, 

are sifting all things — laws, customs, insti- 
tutions, everything. The church can not 
escape. You can not escape. The world is 
sifting you. It is asking questions about 
your religion, and you will appeal in vain 
to the doctrine, or the book, or the worship. 
The world cares for only one thing : are you 
performing some deed or speaking some 
word that shall go to bless the great com- 
pany of those who are footsore and weary? 



72 



Guides to the Higher Life 

j , We are unhappy because we have 

J J 3 not yet learned the secret of hap- 
piness, unhappy because we are searching 
in the wrong places for happiness, unhappy 
not because we were born for trouble, but 
because, born into trouble, we have not yet 
learned to gather out of it joy, peace and 
contentment. 



, , There is no law, no principle, no 

gospel so virtuous and vital, so 
inherently divine in itself, but that it may 
be converted into a destructive force by 
over-emphasis. 



j , Most of the great accomplish- 

J J $ ments of history have been 
wrought out under the influence of beauty. 
The beauty of the stars has touched the 
sense of the sublime within and created our 
astronomy ; the beauty of the mountains has 
lured men forth with hammer and chisel 
and given us a geology; the sober beauty 
of ruined cities has appealed to the imagi- 
nation, producing the historian ; the beauty 
of foliage and flower has stirred men with 
delight and led to the careful observations 
that have resulted in the study of botany. 
Were it not for the sweet and subtle in- 
fluence of beauty there would be no inspira- 
tion in science, no object in philosophy, no 
passion in religion. 

73 



Guides to the Higher Life 

Tulv g God is not in some far distant 
J y space but here in every experience 

of mind and heart, if only we could see him. 
The revelation that God makes to our con- 
sciousness is not something mysterious and 
wholly inexplicable, something apart from 
all the other experiences of our inner life, 
something that can be set off in our nature 
by itself. That revelation is in the ordinary 
loves and friendships, in the ordinary pains 
and struggles and victories of our every- 
day life. 

t l » We can never know all the truth 
•* y ' in this life, but we can know 
enough to serve us as a faithful guide. 

Let us not seek to know the mysteries of 
the universe but the duties of the day, 
assured that Thou wilt give to the faithful, 
humble seeker direction and guidance. 



j , o The Christian life is both a power 
** ^ and a practice. Have we under- 

taken its practice without experiencing its 
power? If so we are working from the 
circumference in rather than from the center 
out. Both power and performance must 
receive due regard, but we should never 
forget that power must always precede 
performance. 



74 



Guides to the Higher Life 

T . True heroism lies underneath the 

J ? * commonplace of life. It asks no 
higher wages of virtue than the privilege of 
going on and on, plucking out of weariness 
the sweet consciousness of laboring, sacri- 
ficing and suffering with God. 

We can achieve greatness simply by 
handling our common tasks in a way that 
will administer to larger ends. 



j n The first aim of life should be to 

•* y find our work, to know the one 

thing for which we are adapted, then to 
work at it like a very Hercules. The second 
aim should be to find our Bethany, to learn 
where those scenes are in the midst of which 
we can gather the strength and courage 
needed in the active duties of life. 



r * The higher righteousness calls 

•* y for an imitation of Christ, an 

imitation in the sense that his spirit is to 
be reproduced in us, and through us is to 
make itself felt in the practical and com- 
plex affairs of daily life. To seek slavishly 
to imitate Christ is to fall back into the 
method of the lower righteousness, which 
seeks always to reproduce the form of life 
rather than its essential power. 



75 



Guides to the Higher Life 

j , Religion is simply that love which 

•* Y comes from God into the soul in 

answer to our yearning desire and our wait- 
ing confidence. We know God as we know 
the sun, which shines upon our bodies and 
warms them. God shines upon the inner 
life and love is born. To study the theory 
of light is not to be warmed by it, and to 
study systematic theology, whether in a 
seminary or in a church, is not to know God 
but simply to know something about him. 
To know God is to have him bathe the 
soul till it is pure through love and fragrant 
with all the graces of charity. 



j , Life is given to man for life's 

J j 3 sake. It is not life that makes the 
burden, it is the lack of it. 

We do not realize that the most important 
thing in life is life itself. 



j , Jesus' commandment, which he 

** Y * characterized as the " new com- 
mandment " under which the world hence- 
forth was to live, put man first and settled 
forever that men were to come to God and 
the God life, to heaven and the heavenly 
character, by way of their love for humanity. 



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Guides to the Higher Life 

j , Loveliness of form and color 

J * 5 always has this mission to per- 
form, to point us to a beauty that is unseen 
and eternal. All that is of the earth passes 
away and is gone. Were there no immortal 
meanings wrapped up in this earthly beauty, 
how it would mock us ! But the heart is 
comforted when we think that every splen- 
dor of the dying day is matched by some 
unseen and undying splendor. Would we 
seize upon a loveliness that is unfailing, a 
harmony more divine and more lasting than 
any harmony of form or color or sound, 
we must turn to Christ and find in him 
that final revelation of spiritual beauty by 
which the human interprets to the human 
the secret of its own being. 



j , fi I believe that God loves health 
J Y of body, cheerfulness of disposi- 

tion, a mind filled with clean and happy 
thoughts and a spirit that rejoices in all the 
good things of this created world. 



T « There are many virtues that one's 

I ill xr oT . 

J y ' character develops in the midst 
of toil, but there are powers and capabili- 
ties of the soul that can not be developed 
except in leisure. Imagination, intuition, 
conscience, reverence are capacities of the 
human soul that can be developed only in 
the hour of quiet. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

j * a Not down and back are we to 
•* ^ look for God but up and on. He 

spoke yesterday, he speaks today. If the 
sky is gray then out of the cloud comes his 
voice; if the glare of sunlight falls on sea 
and land, then is his image reflected in the 
sunbeam. 

May Thy voice fill the hearing of our 
soul and make us glad with the very glad- 
ness of heaven. 



T 1v so Evolution has made God more 
J j 9 necessary to all our thinking. The 
old arguments have been destroyed by being 
fulfilled. To try to account for things, to 
try to think, to try anything except on the 
basis of assuming God, is utterly impossible 
and must lead to an intellectual confusion 
that is chaotic and maddening. That way 
lies madness, not only of the mind but of the 
soul. 

T - There are the three windows of 

July 30 the soul — that of faith, that of 
hope and that of love. We may shut these 
windows if we will; we may darken the 
chamber of the soul ; but so surely as we fail 
to keep open the windows of faith and hope 
and love, so surely will life turn into bitter- 
ness and all the experiences of our days 
come at last to mock us. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

j , Under the necessity of obeying 

J * 3 something, obey the highest. 
Obliged to choose a master, choose Christ. 

What a man obeys in this world makes or 
mars him. Unless the object of our obedi- 
ence is worthy of the highest in us there can 
be no exalted character. 



August i Emerson was ri g ht in sa Y m g 
s that no other man's experience, 

far less the record of any other man's expe- 
rience, can prove a satisfying evidence of 
immortality. If the immortal tide of life 
within your soul is at its flood, eternal exist- 
ence is so real a thing that you need no 
other evidence. But if your life is selfish, if 
the flood gates of love do not swing open 
into your soul, all the arguments of all the 
centuries will accomplish little in convincing 
you of the reality of the ageless life. It is 
only through the quickening and develop- 
ing of your own spiritual powers that you 
can rise to a Christian faith in immortality. 



* As every argument has wrapped 

*> up in it some conclusion, so 

every vice has wrapped up in it some pun- 
ishment, every virtue has wrapped up in it 
some reward. 



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Guides 10 the Higher Life 

a t For the Christian there is noth- 

** * ing in all this wide universe to * 
fear. 

In the assurance that we are shut into the 
hand of God as in a defense that can not be 
violated, help us to rejoice and still rejoice. 



A ust The instinctive longing for rest 
** ^ is not an ignoble thing ; it is the 
outreaching of a nature that instinctively 
feels that it was made for rest and that out 
of the wearying toil of the present is to 
emerge the heavenly repose of the future. 
When the boy has finished the task set him 
by his father he leaps away to his play with 
bounding heart. That play is in itself a 
work, yet is the boy's nature so tuned in 
harmony to it that it becomes the joy of 
his life. When we shall have finished the 
tasks given us by our Father we shall break 
forth into that new life with a noble joy. 
Our activity will still be the activity of work 
but for us the work will be play, for the 
heart will be perfectly tuned to the effort 
without. 

. Little by little men are learning 

ugus 5 tne s i m pi e an d infinitely sweet 

lesson of the gospel, that religion is nothing 
more than love at work in the world, trying 
to beautify human life. 
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Guides to the Higher Life 



a 



Follow me ' on the lips of 
u £ us Jesus meant the mount of trans- 

figuration quite as much as it meant the 
valley of sacrifice; it meant that his dis- 
ciples were to listen when he spoke of God 
quite as much as they were to listen when 
he spoke of human society, that they were 
to go with him apart for some holy hour of 
prayer no less than when he visited the 
poor on some mission of mercy. 

A Speak to us by silence or by 

** ' sound, by the spirit that is 
invisible or by the powers that appear. 

Teach us the heavenly speech that we 
mav learn to talk with Thee. 



A 8 ^ e are enwra PP e d by spiritual 

** realities, but our eyes are blind 

and we do not see them. It is related of one 
of the richest mines in the world that it was 
discovered by tearing up a shrub from the 
hillside. So much of richness would be 
revealed in the little things of life if only 
we would look carefully at all that seems so 
slight, compelling ourselves to search for 
the moral significance. We need to have 
formed within us the purpose to use the 
ordinary things of life as spiritual agencies. 



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Guides to the Higher Life 

* . A man does not arrive at con- 

* 9 tentment without great strug- 
gle, without time and patient waiting, with- 
out many failures and discouragements. 
Day by day he must learn his lesson, day 
by day he must examine himself whether he 
be in the way of attainment. A contented 
mind is the richest possession in life. God 
has made such a treasure possible only to 
the highest endeavor. 



A , Rest is very much like knowl- 

August 10 , ., y , 

& edge; it does not possess us, 

we must possess it; we must reach forth 
and grasp it. We live out our lives and do 
our work, enwrapped by a whole atmos- 
phere of rest of which we are totally uncon- 
scious. 



A . Rewards and judgments are as 

*> sure and natural in the spirit 

world as is the harvest that springs out of 
the seed. It is popular to scoff at many of 
the old notions of judgment, but here is a 
view of the judgment at which men can 
not scoff. For judgment, present and 
future, viewed from this standpoint, is not 
an arbitrary but a natural thing. Every 
man is his own judge and he judges him- 
self according to the law of his own nature. 



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Guides to the Higher Life 

a . Every true and sacred impulse 

^ is a divine call to open the soul 

heavenward that God may breathe into it 
fulness of life and richness of love. 



August i* The only blas P hem y is to be 
6 false to the highest you know. 

To be true to an undivine principle in 
nature and false to a divine principle in the 
soul — this would be the crowning blas- 
phemy, the real sin against the Holy Ghost. 



. Those who passed through 

^ ^ the Jewish temple went first 

through the outer court, then through the 
inner court, within and yet within, till they 
came at last to the holy of holies. Lift the 
veil he who dares, for within is the Shekinah ; 
God dwelleth there. The world may pass 
through the outer court of your life, com- 
panions may come into the inner court, 
friends may sit down in the temple within, 
those whom you most love may be ushered 
into the secret chamber; but beyond that is 
the sanctuary. No human being has ever 
drawn the veil aside. Only the spirit of 
the living God can enter there. Unless that 
inner sanctuary has been filled with the 
Shekinah and beautified by the companion- 
ship of God, believe me, the deepest and 
holiest life possible to you, by you has never 
been known. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

A ust Let us face all the realities of 

g 5 life but face them as those who 

have walked through the King's country 
with Christ and are therefore not afraid. 

Taking ourselves out of the duties of life 
is to miss the opportunities we have for 
making it better. 



A *rust 16 Faithfulness to one another is 
** the logical and spiritual out- 

come of a fulness of faith in God. There 
is no way by which people can be persuaded 
into faithfulness except through those 
impelling motives that spring out of faith. 
That day when the world loses its faith in 
Jesus' God it will lose its hold on Jesus' 
ideal of the moral life. The vision of the 
Son of Man searched into all the deep places 
of the soul, and he saw, with a profoundness 
of insight that has never been equaled, that 
only faith in God could lead men to any 
high and heroic realization of faithfulness 
to one another. 



A Religion is not an artificial 

** ' grafting on of something to 

the natural life ; it is the unfolding to their 
fulness and perfection of those powers that 
are native in the soul from the first. 



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Guides to the Higher Life 

A . Only the man who has cour- 

August 18 J u , , , 

to age enough to see and to 

appreciate the full danger of his course, who 
is so sensitive that a real struggle is neces- 
sary to overcome his predisposition to inac- 
tion — only such a man is courageous in 
the highest sense, as he walks forward to 
meet fate or to bear the burden of some 
martyrdom. It is not courageous to oppose 
public opinion if the regard of men means 
nothing to you. It is not courageous to 
bear pain if you have little nerve sensibility. 
It is not courageous to push into the dark- 
ness if life is so distasteful that you do not 
love the light. Courage is measured more 
by what you overcome than by what you do. 



* . Suffering serves as a check to 

^ 9 sin. It corrects the evil that 

exists in the soul and in society. Having 
granted the fact of sin, we can understand 
how much of the world's suffering is in 
reality a blessing. 

The most cheerful people, those who have 
the sweetest faith in life and in all life's 
issues, are those who have had most to 
endure. 

August 20 ^ ay we have onIy t his ° ne 
s v aim, to abate the transitory ills 

and to be faithful to the eternal goodness. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

August 21 Are y° u tr y in ^ to fi ^ ire God 
& out with a pencil and paper, 

are you striving to reason him out from the 
pages of a book? Put pencil and book 
aside. Go forth into the midst of this toil- 
ing, sinning and suffering world and prove 
yourself a brother to men. In working out 
and establishing the relations of brother- 
hood, you will enter into a realization of the 
divinity that broods over you and over the 
lives of all men. If a man know not his 
brother whom he hath seen, how can he 
know God whom he hath not seen? 



August 22 ^ e va ^ ue °f our service to the 
s world is not determined by 

the length of time we serve men but by the 

character and enthusiasm which we put into 

our service. 

Very much of the failure of Christian 
service is due to the fact that men are con- 
tinually trying to give that which they have 
not. 

A Love holds the same relation 

August 23 tQ aU things elge that in the 

physical world gravitation holds to all the 
various forms of matter. It is the power 
that binds into unity ; it is the pledge of the 
spiritual solidarity of the race. 



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Guides to the Higher Life 

A O fatal mistake when we search 

AugUSt 24 r , • 4.U 

& ^ for happiness in the wrong 

world realm, when we endeavor to change 
our circumstances without ever striving to 
change our character ! It is not man's 
adjustment of his life to the world but the 
adjustment of his life to the profoundest 
needs and aspirations of his nature that 
brings him happiness; it is not being in 
harmony with the existing conditions about 
him but being in harmony with God, the 
eternal spirit of things, that brings him 
unspeakable peace. 



A A man is first of all a man; 

° 5 after that he is what his calling 

makes him. 

We become like that about which we 
think ; we are made over into that which we 
most admire. 

A • f. It is by exploring that which 

aVUcTUSl 20 ♦ j * 1 i 1 i 1 

& is material that we can under- 

stand, that we come finally to an apprecia- 
tion of that which is spiritual, the undying 
reality that we need to understand. The 
love that grows up in the heart, the thought 
that grows up in the mind, the reverence 
that grows up in the soul — all pass through 
this same process of natural growth, first 
the blade, then the ear, then the full corn 
in the ear. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

A ust Avoid the associations of life 

s ' that limit the soul's horizon. 

May we have the open vision of the 
prophet that we may see how weak is all 
that men deem strong and how strong is 
that which men are wont to consider weak. 



A ust © The commandments of God 
^ are a part of the very process 

of things, wrapped up in the constitution of 
matter and spirit. They are not commands 
given from without but laws written in flower 
and stream and star; injunctions wrought 
into bone and muscle and nerve. God has 
written every commandment of the Bible in 
man's nature. It was written there, that 
commandment, long before there was a tab- 
let of stone or a sermon on the mount. 



A To the poet the very stars of 

/\.U£TUSi 2Q •• , .1 • • 

to heaven sing together m joy; 

to the prophet every holy thought breathes 
a song, and all the yearnings and strifes 
and aspirations of a soul blend into a spirit- 
ual symphony. . . Pray God, the day of 
creeds has past, the day of symphonies has 
come, or rather, may not our creeds be 
symphonies, every statement of faith giving 
forth some soul-stirring harmony of love 
and aspiration? 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

August 10 The . real . tra s ed y of y° m life 

5 v 6 consists in that which you 
have lost. Can you not see how the strug- 
gle that you are making to live righteously 
in the world is made the harder because of 
sins of omission or commission that the 
past records? The early years of your life 
presented certain distinct opportunities for 
moral and religious development. These 
opportunities you did not improve and the 
result has been that you have fought dur- 
ing all these later years under severe handi- 
cap. 

A Worldliness does not consist 

*• 3 in a man's attachment to the 
world or to the things of the world but in 
the spirit that moves him to the misuse of 
that which was designed to minister to his 
manhood. 

We are abusing the world when we so 
use it that others are injured thereby. 



September i M an is created for both 

work and rest. Rest is the 
end, work the method by which rest is to 
be achieved. Our life here is a continuous 
struggle toward the harmonious adjustment 
of external and internal conditions. Per- 
fection means the attainment of this har- 
mony between the inner life and the outer 
circumstances. 

8 9 



Guides to the Higher Life 

September 2 U ,° f nc f e ?™ r inner . f U ^ is 

r right it will express itself as 

God would wish. Turn to the life within 
rather than to the life without; seek not so 
much to possess as to appreciate ; make your 
own life what you would wish the lives of 
others to be ; as the athlete develops his arm, 
as the scholar disciplines his thought, do you 
by worship and service cultivate the spirit- 
ual powers of appreciating all that is most 
divine in life ; tune your soul to the rhythm 
of the deeper harmony, then let God touch 
the hidden chords, and all the inner cham- 
bers of your soul will be filled with music. 

September % ^ selfish man is unac- 
P 3 quainted with the high 

ecstacies of joy; one who is self-centered is 
in the very nature of things far removed 
from peace and tranquillity of soul. 

c u It is a church of the spirit 

September 4 ^ we need today> We 

need scholars to define for us the literary 
structure of our Bible ; we need theologians 
to outline for us a system of doctrine that 
shall meet the new need of the day; but 
above all else we need those who will empha- 
size the primitive simplicity of the gospel, 
who will present religion to the world as a 
life in which man may be conscious of a 
spiritual presence that strengthens and 
blesses him. 
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Guides to the Higher Life 

« , The inevitable result of 

P *> making one thing secular 

and another thing sacred is that men will 
attempt two standards — the living of one 
life that is secular and another life that is 
sacred. The principle that holds us 
together in the communion of saints ought 
to hold us together in the communion of 
trade and industry. The supreme law for 
the individual is love wherever that indi- 
vidual may be found; the chief law for 
society is the law of love. 

c t u a Education does not mean 
P that you are to learn things 

but that you are to learn how to do things. 
Education does not mean simply that you 
are to master the highest and noblest 
thought in the world, but that through this 
mastery you are to acquire the power to do 
your own thinking. 

« , The true and eternal priest- 

" ' hood is that of personal 

service, the priesthood by which a man so 
ministers to others as to make them think 
of God. This is the priesthood for which 
the world waits. Wherever there stands 
a man whose name means righteousness 
and whose influence makes for peace and 
whose hands are filled with beautiful min- 
istries for the poor — wherever such a man 
is found, it will be seen that other men 
gather round him. 

9i 



Guides to the Higher Life 

September 8 ^ et your thon ^ a , nd «f? 

r have some practical relation 

to your life. Fitting for the voyage of life, 
you should keep the voyage and the destina- 
tion ever before you. Are you steering the 
ship of your life by the star of some lofty 
purpose ? Be sure that it is only a question 
of time when the life that drifts with the 
current shall be dashed against the rocks. 
The wrecks with which the coast is strewn 
are there because, with no purpose, young 
people allowed themselves to drift with the 
current. Half the battle of life is won when 
you have formed your purpose and see it 
gleaming there in the distance like a star. 



September 9 Beh ° M ' ,? Ur Hfe l S , sh ° rt a " d 
r * our work is great ! 

May we quietly wait, patiently work, lov- 
ingly live and peacefully die. Let this be 
our record to the end of time. 



c t u It is not by ridding our- 

P selves of the burdens that 

rest upon us but by gathering into our own 
intellectual and soul experiences more of 
the life of humanity and of God, that we 
are to realize our dream of true blessedness. 



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Guides to the Higher Life 

« , The time has come for all 

" men who believe that Jesus 

has the right idea of God to say so plainly 
and without equivocation. It is time for 
men who believe that the conception of God 
wrought into medieval theology is not only 
wrong philosophically, but, ethically consid- 
ered, immoral — it is time for such to speak 
out plainly. The church can not afford to 
be behind the world in ethical sensibility. 

- The right-minded person 

September 12 r A & • • u j- 

r finds supreme joy in obedi- 

ence; he cares to know only if the object of 
his obedience is worthy. 

May we be obedient to what we under- 
stand to be Thy holy purpose in our lives. 

September x* The thing to be re £ retted 
* ° is, not that we enjoy the 

material things of life, but that we have so 
fastened ourselves to the things of the earth 
that we have shut out of our souls the 
greater capabilities, the greater require- 
ments ; that we have fastened ourselves to 
material things in such a way that we are 
not developing the gifts of imagination and 
intuition, the qualities of faith and hope and 
reverence, that would lift us up into com- 
munion with all that is spiritual and eternal 
and true. This is really the pathetic thing 
in life. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

September 14 Wherever you find among 

r ^ men a passion for right- 

eousness, integrity in business, kindness of 
heart and culture of soul, sympathy for the 
afflicted, charity for the wayward, wherever 
you find depth and solidity of character, 
there the kingdom of heaven is being 
realized. 

September iq ^ is * s the s P* rit with 
p 5 which you should take up 

the work of your life : do it bit by bit, as 

though you were working, as the old Greeks 

thought they worked, under the direct 

supervision of the gods. Leave the issue of 

that work with Him who planned it. Take 

no more on your shoulders than God places 

upon them. Accustom yourself to breathe 

the atmosphere of rest; open your nature 

to the sweet influences of peace. This is 

God's world and you are not responsible for 

it. He who originated the plan is sufficient 

for its execution. 

« , ^ To the eye of today the 

September 16 material world is only a 

veil hiding some deeper reality. We mar- 
vel that men could have been so dogmatic 
as to affirm that there can be nothing else 
than that which our five senses recognize. 
It may be that there are other senses latent 
in man, yet to be developed. It may be that 
if our present senses were more keenly 
developed we should recognize a world 
lying about us of which we are now 
ignorant. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

o , , There can be no real and 

September 17 « .... , . .,«, , 

^ ' abiding happiness without 

sacrifice. The happiness of a scholar — does 
it not come as the result of countless sacri- 
fices ? The happiness of a mother — is not 
its very foundation sacrifice ? Our greatest 
joys do not result from our efforts toward 
self-gratification but from a loving and 
spontaneous service to other lives. The 
simplest and hardest lesson to learn in life 
is this: joy comes not to him who seeks it 
for himself but to him who seeks it for other 
people. 



SeDtember 18 Christ is the great exem- 
P plar of true kindness. Not 

many of us can follow him in the great deeds 
of his life, but we may imitate him in those 
lesser ministries that just as truly reflect 
the power and beauty of his character. 

Bind us with loyalty to that resplendent 
ideal which Thou hast given us in the 
Christ. 



e t u The ideal of life is not to 

P ^ enwrap the soul as lightly 

as possible in the garment of faith, but to 
enswathe it so richly that the weary soul of 
every struggling child of God may nestle 
down into the warmth and tenderness of 
the divine love. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

« , The fact that one man has 

P seen a falling star is greater 

evidence than the fact that a hundred men 
have failed to see it. The testimony of ten 
millions of men spiritually blind is not 
equal to the spiritual utterance of one Christ, 
who arose a great while before it was day 
that he might go into a desert place and 
pray. 

September 21 Every good thing is one 
r 01 the powers of God to 

deliver us from evil. 

Fill us with the strength of him who 
knows his weakness and leans ever upon 
Thee. 

c t u There are two kinds of 

P waiting, that of the man 

who stands still and that of the man who 
leaps forward to serve. If we say of a host 
that he waited upon his guest we do not 
mean that he stood waiting for the guest 
to reward some expectation; we mean that 
he was eager to serve that guest in every 
possible way and therein found his chief 
reward. So when we speak of waiting on 
the Lord we do not mean that we stand or 
kneel with folded hands till the Lord grant 
us a blessing ; rather do we mean the eager 
pushing forward to those moral and spirit- 
ual tasks of life, in the performance of 
which we gain our strength and pass out 
and up into the atmosphere of refreshment. 

9 6 



Guides to the Higher Life 

e t u You say of a painting that 

P 3 it is beautiful. In quite as 

real a way may not a thought be beautiful, 
or an emotion? This is the beauty of the 
Christ, a beauty that chastens itself out of 
love and self-sacrifice, out of compassion for 
the poor and suffering; and in so far as we 
rise to the highest conception of life we shall 
come to regard this as the true and enthrall- 
ing beauty — a beauty of soul and mind 
and heart. 

u The most pathetic thing 

beptember 24 ,, r ,° 

r ^ that one can witness is to 

see people meet suffering in the wrong way. 
The experience is hard and bitter enough 
in itself, yet it would seem a pity that men 
should miss this only possible way of attain- 
ing blessedness. 

Pain is a secret and silent guide, leading 
us through dangers, inspiring us with forti- 
tude and making us strong in character. 



September 25 May charit y unto those 
^ D who are unfortunate be the 

constant thought of our lives. Do Thou 

bring home to every heart the searching 

question, " Whoso hath the world's goods, 

and beholdeth his brother in need, and shut- 

teth up his compassion from him, how doth 

the love of God abide in him? 



99 



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Guides to the Higher Life 

, - In every transgression 

September 2b there gQes Qut of human 

life something that can never come back. 
God may remit the sin, but the penalty for 
that sin must burn itself out in the body or 
soul of the offender. Out of all in your 
life that is left today God will make the 
most, but even God himself can not give 
you back that which you lost yesterday. 



e t u - Life seems a thing of mean 
" ' consequence because there 

are within us the imitations of something 
high and noble. We speak of the common, 
the little things of life. Strange that we 
do not see that there is nothing common. 

May all the daily toil of our mortal lives 
be as sacramental as our prayers. 



c A ~4. A ~o* A - oq It 1S natural and easy to 
September 20 v « , ., . j« 1 

r live, but it is exceedingly 

difficult to live well. It is a most familiar 
truth, hidden for a long time but known in 
later years, that individual life which is of 
worth or beauty must be wrought out care- 
fully and patiently. One law holds true in 
all parts of God's kingdom, the law that all 
things, mind and matter, must be wrought 
upon till they shall show signs of labor. 



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Guides to the Higher Life 

q^+^~,u^,. ~~ The cultivation of the spir- 
beptember 29 ., « ,.,. r , * ^ , 

r * ltual qualities 01 the soul, 

the developing of the power of appreciating 
the best in God's world, is the greatest 
endeavor of human life. Every man who 
was ever of any worth to the world has 
devoted the energies of his life to the spirit- 
ual culture of himself. " Love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself/' it is written, but thou thy- 
self art the model, and the model must 
always come before any reproduction of it. 
It is by first appreciating the richness of 
our own lives that we enter into a deep 
realization of the worth of other lives. We 
must first experiment on our own lives 
before we can hope to experiment success- 
fully on the lives of those about us. 



September ^o The holier a man ' s life 
P 3 becomes, the more refined, 

yet penetrating and dangerous, become the 

temptations that assail him. 

However much one may be shut up by 
circumstances to the evil, no man was ever 
yet shut up to the necessity of choosing the 
wrong. 

^ . As we have learned that Thy 

Uctober 1 *.* .,, . vr * 

life is withm our life, so have 

we learned that we must place ourselves 
within the spiritual current of existence and 
avail ourselves of the spiritual forces about 
us in order to grow. 

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LofCi 



Guides to the Higher Life 

October 2 The Joys of life are gifts from 

thy hand, our Father. The sol- 
emn beauty of this autumn lays hold of us 
and stirs within us all those subtle spiritual 
suggestions of a divine glory, a glory hid- 
den from mortal sight but revealed to the 
eye of faith. The fulness of the harvest 
rejoices us and the splendor of the over- 
arching sky fills us with happiness. We 
are strengthened by a holy consciousness of 
thy providence and care. 



f-v t 1. Man is so constituted that his 

3 affection must be centered on 
something. The only way to escape from a 
base passion is to be mastered by a holy 
love. We must stop in the midst of shows 
or push our way forward into the realm of 
reality. We are to choose which we will 
serve: the outer thing which is transitory 
and unreal, or the inner ideal which is eter- 
nal and true. 



^ -_ Faith in God is the welcome 

October 4 .« , « ^1 . 

^ that a man gives to everything 

that is godlike, everything that is true, 

everything that is beautiful, everything that 

is good. You are a man of faith in just the 

measure that you have laid hold upon, 

appropriated and made a part of your being 

these great realities of truth and beauty and 

goodness which are God. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

~ , The greatest power that can 

** flow into any human life is 
the power of overcoming evil. The great 
purpose of your life, whatever minor aims 
you may have, should be the single purpose 
of bearing witness to that which is divinely 
and eternally true. In the accomplishment 
of this purpose build in behind your life 
all the crowning associations of hallowed 
friendship; then turn that life to God; let 
him draw you up into the consciousness of 
his love and fatherly tenderness. This alone 
can give you the power of overcoming evil. 
This alone can help you to realize the great- 
est mission a man can have upon earth — to 
be in himself and in the life he lives, a sim- 
ple witness unto that which is spiritually 
true. 



n , , a Heaven is the highest life pos- 

sible; hell is the missing of 
that life. 

If there is one thing above others that a 
man should fear, it is the blighting of his 
inner life. 



fVtnher n 0nl ^ the love ° f the Father > 

' which means a full and joyous 
realization that the Father loves us, only the 
love of the Father can ennoble and purify 
one's love for the world, can make that love 
a holy thing. 

IOI 



Guides to the Higher Life 

r\„4.„u A ~ o Is your house a home that 
October 8 . . , , ., £ 

ministers to the inner peace of 

soul, to the eternal and unseen beauty, to the 
truth that is real and abiding? Do the 
dwellers in that home not only eat their 
bread with physical joy but learn in so doing 
to thank God out of grateful hearts? Does 
every luxury, as well as every necessity, min- 
ister to their inner being, building them up 
in character and giving to their bearing 
those finer graces learned only in a true 
home? Then is your home a home indeed, 
a home that ministers to the enrichment of 
the spiritual life, a home that is the abiding 
place of the Most High. 

October o To believe in the reli K ion of 

Jesus is not to hold the doc- 
trines of this or that creed; it is to believe 
that his way of life, the way of love and 
service to other people, is the true way. 

May we be of one mind and one heart, in 
pity relieving, in mercy forgiving and in 
honor preferring one another. 



n , As the birds in these autumn 

uctooer 10 days fly far away toward the 

south, seeking light and warmth, so may we 
seek the high realms of faith, where Thy 
truth dispels every shadow and where Thy 
love warms every aspiring instinct of our 
being. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

n , As it was said of Christ that 

uctober ii he set his face toward j eru . 

salem, so may we set our faces toward the 
accomplishment of every waiting duty. 

Let each morning and evening find us 
ready for Thy perfect will. 

^ , u To turn away from the 

Uctober 12 , \ 

unknown were to turn away 

from the highest call to heroism that time 
or life can make. Who are our heroes? 
Are they not those who have dared the 
unknown, men who have fought their 
way into dark continents, men who have 
been shipwrecked on strange seas, men who 
have met and triumphed over every chal- 
lenge of hardship ? Are there those with so 
little passion for exploration that the age- 
long dash for the north pole seems to them 
madness ? Were it not a shame for men ever 
to talk about the unknown north and never 
sacrifice a life to reach its further boundary? 
Are we such weaklings that we must weigh 
lives against the appeal to heroism ? Where 
is it written that it is necessary men should 
live ? The only necessity is that one should 
play his part like a man. 

(\ t h We need to remember that 

3 the method of nature is never 
revolution but always evolution. The vision 
of the new order of things dawns upon the 
world through a dissolving view of the old. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

October 14 ? ne Poetical service of 

^ beauty in the economy of 
life is found in the manner in which it 
feeds our enthusiasm. You can not have 
failed to notice how people who are engaged 
in artistic pursuits throw themselves with 
all the energy of their being into the per- 
formance of their work ; it is because they 
are infatuated with the thing that they have 
set themselves to do. Other men may labor 
from a sense of duty or necessity ; they work 
because they must. Some dream or vision 
of beauty is before them and their passion 
is to realize and give expression to that 
dream. 

Give us a love for goodness, a passion for 
truth and a thrill for everything that Thou 
hast made beautiful. 



October 15 The laws of God are sim P 1 y 

the will of God manifested. 

We see not law so much as the continuous 

working of the immanent God. Slowly we 

are learning to spell nature with a capital N. 



October 16 T he P rimai 7 need of the a §" e 

is not a system of truth but a 

vital, inspiring personality. The greatest 
thing known to man is man. We can com- 
prehend the divine only in the measure that 
we ourselves become divine. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

October 17 Every effort on your part 
1 that tends to give the world 

of men a more complete mastery over the 

world of nature, is promoting the coming 

of the kingdom of heaven. Every thought 

that you throw into the scale of truth, every 

insight that you give some person into his 

own possibilities, every inherently honest 

deed that you perform, every act of service 

that you undertake, every blow at ignorance, 

every rebuke of vice and wickedness, every 

implantation of faith and hope and love in 

other hearts, helps to bring down to earth 

the kingdom of heaven. 



r\ <u o I can not think of a more ter- 
October 18 .^ , u . ,,. , A £ 

nble thing in this world of 

God's than to fight a truth. 

Nothing can be true in one place and 
false in another. * 



q , Disposition and character are 

" the chief factors in the 
achievement of a life's happiness. We 
speak of the world as being the realm with- 
out, but the widest realm is the world within. 
Here within this unseen world we live out 
our lives. If only we can reach the moun- 
tain peaks of this inner world of character 
our eyes will be greeted by an outlook 
resplendent with beauty and glory. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

q , God does not judge us by our 

professions nor yet by our 
actual experiences; he judges us by our 
spirit. The moral man who makes no pro- 
fession, but whose spirit of benevolence and 
sacrifice and unselfish consideration of those 
about him is greater than that of his Chris- 
tian neighbor, is more religious that that 
neighbor and stands nearer to God. Life is 
not the result of what we are not but of 
what we are. 



n , It is only as a man is over- 

flowing in his own life that 
he can give to the lives of those about him. 
If somehow we can unite ourselves with 
God so that down through life's activities 
there shall be a divine power, then we shall 
have at last the true secret of living. 

Every life that is rich enriches other lives ; 
every life that is inspired inspires others; 
every live soul, as it comes into contact with 
another soul, sends a thrill of life through it. 



-. , To learn how to act and how 

to teach may well employ our 
most earnest endeavor, but to know how to 
think and to meditate and to pray, to know 
how to go apart into the rest and the soli- 
tude of God — this also is not without its 
immeasurable value. 
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Guides to the Higher Life 

^ , The way of Jesus is the only 

October 23 , t ± v • 

true way for a man to live in 

this world, the only way that is heroic, the 

only way that brings blessedness and opens 

out into the eternal life. 

If we desire the fame of the world rather 
than unbroken honor, have mercy upon us. 
If we desire to be great as the world counts 
greatness rather than good as God counts 
goodness, have mercy upon us. 



n « Evolution has not in any sense 

v-/CtODer 24 j* 1 j /""• j *±. 1 • 1 

^ displaced God; it has simply 

unfolded his method of creation. It has 
revealed the truth that instead of God's mak- 
ing man at once, out of hand, thousands and 
thousands of years have gone to the form- 
ing of the temple of man's body. And the 
long way that we have come is a promise 
and pledge of the long way that we have 
to go. 



r\~*.~u~- „ There is a veil between 
October 25 , , . « £ 

* nature ana the eyes of man 

that needs to be torn asunder. Then we 
should see how marvelous is the world in 
which we dwell. Life would not cease to 
be a tragedy, but it would become a divine 
tragedy. Life would cease to be a drudg- 
ery; it would become a worship. 



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Guides to the Higher Life 

October 26 9 oodn( : ss is a vi g° rous > posi- 
tive virtue. To be good 

means to be good for something. A thing 
is good when it is realizing the purpose of 
its being. A good man is not one who sim- 
ply abstains from evil but one who makes 
his life a positive force for righteousness. 
Goodness thus interpreted, full of fire and 
force, is the noblest attainment within the 
reach of man. 



October 27 The ladder that J aco1 ? saw 
' was a vision but no less a 

reality. We may not see it, yet it is there ; 

there when the mellow light falls like a soft 

benediction on the plains of Bethel; there 

when storms sweep and rage ; for out of the 

tempest will come peace, and out of the 

darkness will come a great light. 

Help us to realize in our daily life our 
luminous hours and to transmute our visions 
into conduct and character. 



^ , « The divinity of a man is 

measured by the number, the 
strength and the character of his desires. 
The art of life is to complete life. One 
whose desires do not range into the vast 
and unexplored realms of thought and affec- 
tion has not begun to develop in those 
respects most essential to the rounding out 
and perfecting of his nature. 
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Guides to :he Higher Life 

n , From the cradle all things 

* combine to instruct us. lhe 
fortunes of circumstance, the pleasures and 
griefs, all the experiences of childhood and 
youth and manhood and old age — all are 
lessons which we learn. We say of the prob- 
lem over which the boy wrestles that its 
chief value is in the discipline of the mind. 
So we may say of these human experiences, 
that their chief value is not in anything 
inherent in the experiences themselves but 
in the culture and refinement of the soul. 



q t h The ideal that you have 

3 formed of Jesus is the central 
and controlling power of your spiritual life. 
That life will be strong and beautiful to the 
extent that you have strengthened and beau- 
tified your thought of Jesus. 



^ , It is a fatal mistake to con- 

^ ceive this waiting on the Lord 
as something for Sunday worship and pri- 
vate devotion alone. Rather is it a temper 
of soul and an openness of mind that one 
may take with him to every daily task of 
life. Thus at the same time that we are 
being worn to weariness from without we 
are being refreshed by spiritual power from 
within. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

XT , God is here in his world, 

November i , „ u , r™' 

heaven is all about us. The 

ones you have known and loved, and who 

have passed from your earthly sight for a 

little time, do not inhabit the far spaces. 

They are here with you, though your eyes 

are holden that you can not see them. They 

have brought heaven nearer to you ; the land 

of God is no longer far off. 

XT , Inspiration is the presence 

November 2 £ K-+ , . v ... 

of God in man, expanding 

and illuminating his soul. Formerly inspi- 
ration was a thing of tongue or pen. Now 
it is the blazing glory of a soul, the moving 
of the Eternal Spirit upon the deeps of 
man's inner life. 

Out of the infinite deep of the unseen 
realms may we bring forth inspirations that 
shall glow with life and light and beauty. 

XT , If God is our Father and if 

November 3 he Joves ug and forgiyes us 

our sins, it follows, as the days follow each 
on each, that he must have provided for 
the continuance of this life of love. The 
Father will not cast away that which he has 
created and cared for so tenderly. To hold 
to the fatherhood of God is to believe in 
immortality, and really and deeply to believe 
in the perpetuity of our personal selves^ is 
to make the individual life strong, to dignify 
it and to ennoble it. 
no 



Guides to the Higher Life 

November 4 Long-suffering is that power 

^ of spirit by which you are 
able, in spite of loneliness and pain, to hold 
to the highest ideal of life known to you. 
Is there no joy in your life today, or more 
tragic still, no hope shaping itself in some 
form of beauty out of the tomorrow? Be 
patient. Have the long-suffering of Christ. 
Learn to love God's world and God's peo- 
ple, and, believe me, your own must come 
to you at last. 

KT , We pray Thee that Thou 

November 5 wih walk by Qur si(k that {n 

suffering we may progress and in sorrow 
we may learn sympathy. 

Give us a time of sunshine after the storm 
has spent itself upon our lives. 

N e he 6 ^ e ^ ve w ^ m n the circles of 

two realms, that of the seen 
and that of the unseen. There is a world 
known to the five senses, a world the sub- 
stance of which we can handle and the har- 
monies of which we can hear. But there is 
another realm, that known to faith and hope 
and love, a realm of God and immortality, 
a realm of sweet affections and profound 
thoughts and holy imaginations. The body 
by the exercise of mind knows the world 
of matter ; the soul by the exercise of faith 
knows the world of spirit. One is quite as 
real as the other. 

in 



Guides to the Higher Life 

November 7 Do " ot r fS ard G , od ' s com ~ 

' mandments as lashes to 

drive, but as silken ropes stretched before 

you in the darkness that you may feel your 

way out into the light. 

Make us sensitive to Thy guiding touch 
and responsive to Thy holy will. 



November 8 Sta , ndin f as we are in the 

midst of the battle of our 
everyday, commonplace life, hearing as we 
do the angry roar of contest, we yet under- 
stand but little of the complex movements 
of this modern world. Its questions we can 
not answer, its problems we can not solve, 
its mysteries we can not hope to fathom. 
But the thing that should give us courage 
and inspiration is the confidence that behind 
all the conflicts of this civilization that 
admittedly we can not understand, stands 
God, who in the midst of the battle is 
executing his purposes. 



, T , Have you thought carefully 

November 9 of ^ meat}ing of that 

word conscience ? Con-science ; con — 
together, scire — to know. God and man 
knowing something between themselves — 
that is conscience; and it is the thing that 
makes the infinite difference between the 
brute creation and the human family. 
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Guides to the Higher Life 

jj , The new spirit of the age 

counts a heart throb as of 
infinitely more worth than the most sacred 
precedent or tradition. 

Religion is friendship. The divinest 
religion is that which exemplifies the 
divinest friendship. 

tv T . The chief reason why men 

November n , J £ 

and women grow weary of 

any work is because the growth lies almost 
wholly out of sight. There is progress but 
we fail to see it, and without the inspira- 
tion that comes from actual observation 
we soon grow weary and are in danger 
of halting by the way. That which can be 
seen, that which is physically tangible — in 
that we have full confidence. But if both 
process and result are hidden from sight 
we find it hard to believe in reality. He 
who would build a house watches it rise 
slowly, as stone is laid upon stone ; but he 
who would build character finds within him 
a tendency to become weary in the work, 
since every beautiful outline is hidden from 
the appreciation of sense. 

November 12 ^bpve most other things 

it is wise to cultivate the 
powers of appreciation. The greater the 
number of stops in an organ the greater its 
possibilities as an instrument of music. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

November 13 four idea of a thing will 

° always determine your rela- 
tion to it. Your idea of a man, his ability, 
his character, will influence your bearing 
toward him. Your idea of the Bible will 
fix the measure of its influence on your life. 
Your idea of the Christ will determine to a 
great extent his relation to your life. 



November 14 Tw ° thingS r ™ f° reve , r 

^ great, man and God — all 

else sweeps by and on. The eternal reality 

is the heart of man beating its way outward 

in aspiration and appreciation through the 

infinite sphere of life and love which is God. 

There is something in every man that 
responds to that which is divine. 



XT , The patience that clothes 

November 15 a ^ in the garb of 

humility, the fortitude that comes only 
through self-sacrifice, the tender love that 
springs out of the mysterious deeps of sor- 
row, the nobleness and righteousness of dis- 
position that is far removed from merely 
superficial happiness — all this, by a law 
deep as the sounding-line of God, comes 
onlv to him who faces, as a soldier faces the 
battle fire, these soul-stirring and heroic 
words of Jesus, " Let him deny himself, and 
take up his cross/ 
114 



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Guides to the Higher Life 

XT l /- If your life is dull and corn- 

November 1 6 J i ., . v 

monplace it is because your 

vision is directed toward the earth and your 

soul is centered on its interests. 

Do Thou lift us up until we feel within 
us the very strength of divinity and our 
faces shine with the light of heaven. 

XT , We are trifling with men 

November 17 , \ , 

' when we preach a scheme 

of reconciliation between the soul and God 
that will not serve between the soul and 
itself. Of what use to assure a man that 
God will overlook what his own awakened 
sense of honor will not permit him to over- 
look ? Could we worship a God who would 
relieve a man of just punishment for wrongs 
that no power, human or divine, can undo ? 
When once a man comes to himself, when 
his conscience is sensitive and his moral 
nature is aflame, then he stands forth under 
a new sense of his relation to the influences 
that he has set adrift in the world, then he 
scorns a salvation that is nothing more than 
a cheap escape from what he himself has 
wrought. 

XT u Man is a spirit and the 

November 18 « , - \ £ «. « 

natural object of his love 

must be that which is spiritual. We came 
from God and we are going back to God. 
If the love of the Father is not in us then 
have we not come to ourselves. We have 
mistaken the show for the reality, the crea- 
ture for the creator. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

November 19 Reli ^ n is not , a , giving to 

* separate oneself from the 

world; rather is it the supreme effort to 
stay in the world, to use the world to the 
high aims of spirituality and character. 

November 20 ^ Ve PW that into every 

home during this joyous 
season Thy peace may enter. Unto those 
who are shut in by circumstances of sick- 
ness, be Thou a comforter. Teach them 
that he that dwelleth in the secret place 
of the Most High shall abide under the 
shadow of the Almighty. Teach them that 
the sufferings of the present time are not 
worthy to be compared with the glory which 
shall be revealed in us. May the worn 
and sorrowful understand that no hardship 
or affliction shall be able to separate them 
from the love of Christ — neither tribula- 
tion, nor anguish, nor persecution, nor 
famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword. 
In all things it is possible for us to be more 
than conquerors through him that loved us. 

XT . The great truth that our 

November 21 ~ « . s , , , 

God is creator and ruler is 

the norm of all healthful religious thought ; 
it is the key that unlocks every mystery of 
creation. The spiritual birth of a people 
dates from the time of their awakening to 
this great fact of God's creation and owner- 
ship of the world. 
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Guides to the Higher Life 

XT , All lights are from the sun, 

November 22 , & , ,, 

however much they may 

seem to differ, and all loves are from God, 

various and distinct as they may appear. 

All our conscious relationships are human, 

and in humanity at its best we must find 

God. We do not come to men by way of 

God, we come to God by way of man. The 

commandment of the old law began, " Thou 

shalt love the Lord thy God." " This is my 

commandment," said Jesus, " that ye love 

one another." 



TVT^ro^u^ „„ Benevolence tends to en- 
JMovember 23 « , ... 

^ large a man s personality. 

Teach us that the one thing we shall never 
repent of is a merciful deed. 



XT u When it fully dawns upon 

November 24 ,, , ,, . ? n A , r ,, 

^ us that this is God s world 

and that he made it, we shall begin to under- 
stand that everything is holy and is to be so 
used by us. Our thanksgiving will be 
enlarged and will include within itself all 
the various manifestations of Providence. 
We shall not come to our worship with an 
endeavor to seek out those religious dispen- 
sations for which we should devoutly give 
thanks, but we shall see that there is a 
religious value in everything and that every 
event has its religious significance. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

tvt , It is not the toil of life, 

.November 25 ... rr • 

not its suffering, not its sor- 
row — it is none of these things that make 
up its tragedy. The tragedy of life is that 
men should bear its burdens without ever 
entering into the sacred sweetness of its rest. 

Weariness is not fundamentally a physi- 
cal inability; it arises out of the soul. All 
true poets have seen that he who would 
rest in deepest reality must find the 
unsounded depths of spiritual refreshment. 



November 26 Take us ^ uite w i tmn tne 

enclosure of Thy holy place, 

and guarded by its hallowed defenses, may 
our spirits be soothed in peace, even the 
peace of God which passeth all understand- 
ing. 

Give us not the rest that comes after the 
storm but the res^that is peace at the heart 
of the storm. 

•kx u » The creed of the twentieth 

' century will be theological ; 
it will emphasize the fatherhood of God : 
it will also be sociological ; it will emphasize 
the brotherhood of man. These will be the 
two poles of thought, holding in a divine 
unity the sphere of Christian truth. 



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Guides to the Higher Life 

XT , Never does man begin to 

November 28 •, , ,, ,. . & , u 

develop on the divme, the 

God side of him, until from looking about 
him in the world he begins to look up. We 
set a balcony window in a dwelling-house 
in order that we may look out over the 
world and see the landscape beyond; but 
we place it there also in order that when 
the mantle of darkness falls over the land- 
scape we may look up through the clear 
night and see the stars. 

xt i_ In the measure that we get 

November 29 ^ p ractical things of life 

in relation with the ideal, in that measure 
shall we gain dignity and power. 

It is better to have a high ideal and for- 
ever fail to reach it than to have a low 
ideal and achieve it to your satisfaction. 



xt u All the great forces of the 

November 30 , u ,, & . ... . . u 

earth that minister to the 

good of man, wrongly used minister to his 
destruction. Electricity flashes some greet- 
ing to a distant friend, but wrongly used it 
is a power that destroys life. The experi- 
ence of suffering may be entered upon in 
such a way as to lead to bitterness of soul 
rather than to perfection of character. 
Whether suffering proves a blessing or a 
curse to a man depends on the way in which 
it is used. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

t^ _, .. , We can not keep back the 
December i • , ., •« a^i 

winter; it will come. The 

landscape must be covered with snow, the 
mountains must be robed in ice. But we 
can build a fire on the hearth ; we can light 
the lamps in the darkness of the evening, 
and there in the home we may counteract 
the influence of the cold. Sin and suffer- 
ing are here in the world ; we do not know 
why; we try to avoid them but somehow 
we can not. What then shall we do ? Sim- 
ply this, light the fires within and light the 
lamps within. We can open the channels of 
our nature and let the life of God flow 
through in such great floods that we shall 
be lifted out of the realm of misery, the 
realm of objectivity, into the subjective life 
of love. 

t^ , May we look forward with 

December 2 £ , A , -4.1. 

confidence and hope in the 

future because we have confidence and hope 
in Thee. 

Under the dominance of our Christ may 
we go rejoicing in the better way. 



n^o^iwt- ~ Life is crowded full of 
December 3 ... . -. 

•* opportunities, once missed, 

lost to us forever. Life is crowded full of 
transgressions — thoughts and words and 
deeds — that, once committed, no depth of 
bitter remorse can ever recall. 
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Guides to the Higher Life 

t^ , If you came and asked me 

December 4 i • 1 1 r* 1 

^ how you might know God, 

I should answer, Learn to know man. If 
you asked, How may I learn to love God? 
I could give you no other answer than that 
given by the Apostle John, Learn to love 
one another. Be faithful unto the little that 
is your priceless treasure, and as sure as 
God exists that love w T ill fulfil itself. 

t\^c^u^ * Do you believe in God? 
December 5 r™ , . j t\ 

lhat is your creed. Do you 

reverence God? That is your worship. 

Do you obey God ? That is your life. 

-rv , c Life is full of a beauty that 

December o -, . • u ^p, / 

does not perish. 1 hat beauty 

lies about us as does the atmosphere ; it 

speaks to us of heaven and the God who 

dwells therein and of his Christ. The 

beauty of earth passes and is gone ; rather 

it is we who pass, but from the glory of the 

seen to that of the unseen. The world does 

not look the same to us as it did in our 

youth. The charm that drew us to the 

delights of sense passes away as we come 

to maturity of years. But if we are living 

our lives as we should live them we are pass- 

ing into the rapture of that which is deeper 

and of which neither time nor chance can 

rob us. The old delights are gone ; nothing 

can bring them back. Nor would we have 

it otherwise. At any given period of our 

earthly pilgrimage that which remains is 

far greater than that which we have lost. 

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Guides to the Higher Life 

December 7 We become sure of God not 

1 by iar away speculations of 
the intellect, but by employing on the com- 
mon, everyday facts of our inner life all of 
faith and spiritual power that has been 
given us. 

• 

Have no fear of the scepticism that is a 
denial of doctrines ; fear only the scepticism 
that is a denial of spiritual realities. 



December 8 *J an instinctive [y feels that 

there is something wrong 

with him, that his powers have not found 
their harmonious adjustment. The more 
the new science studies man, the more 
plainly it is seen that his will is not of 
itself in harmony with the will of God. 
Until man's life is changed, until the cur- 
rent of his desires is turned into new chan- 
nels, the higher righteousness is impossible 
to him. The soul that follows its native 
inclination will never find the sweet way of 
peace; it will continue in the bondage of 
restlessness and fear and in consciousness 
of guilt. 

y. , Faith in God is at the foun- 

^ dation of all true culture of 
the soul, because without the power of God 
there can be no spiritual development and 
without the faith in God there can not be 
the realizing of his power. 
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Guides to the Higher Life 

.p. , The fact that a man can 

December 10 gin proyes something . The 

heights are equal to the depths. It is as 
far from the valley to the mountain peak 
as from the mountain peak to the valley. 
Better be a man and sin than a beast 
incapable of sinning. By so much as a 
man has degraded himself is it possible for 
him to be exalted. As one catches a vision 
of grandeur from the contemplation of an 
unfinished statue, so may he detect in an 
immature humanity the vision of the new- 
brotherhood of the kingdom. 



December n G ° d . is ^J* *? th f e ^ 

showing the beauty of 

nature; light to the mind, showing the 
beauty of truth ; light to the soul, showing 
the infinite and unspeakable beauty of love. 

Give us only so much of Thy truth as we 
have love to sanctify ; give us so much of 
Thy love as we have truth to direct. Thus 
may we be guided into the full Christliness 
of life. 



n^^u- ™ To be behind the times is 
December 12 ,, £ £ £ . 

the fate of most of us; to 

be abreast of the times, the good fortune of 

a few ; to be in advance of the times, the 

lone distinction of the prophet. 



123 



Guides to the Higher Life 

December i* ? he one awful res P onsibil " 

6 ity of life is that which 

springs out of the necessity that a man shall 

exercise his God-given power of choosing 

between the way that is right and the way 

that is wrong. Yet there is nothing so 

designed to sober and steady a man as the 

knowledge that the issues of life and death 

hang upon the various fortunes of his 

choice. 

■r. u Progress in society means 

December 14 ., ? t . , J , , 

^ the breaking down of bar- 
riers that separate man from man ; progress 
in religion means the breaking down of 
barriers that separate man from God. 

No man ever yet went from the realm of 
materialism to the realm of idealism, from 
the realm of lower impulse to the region of 
higher motive, without awakening to a reve- 
lation of sonship with God. 

December 15 G ? d ' s P urpo f \ J° set up 

* a kingdom of righteousness 

in the world; man is to work under the 
inspiration of God and not for price or 
reward. The end of civilization is not mate- 
rial splendor but spiritual glory. The king- 
dom of heaven is to be set up in the earth. 
The Christian man is one who has heard 
Christ's voice calling him to this great task 
and in the face of all obstacles has obeyed 
that voice. 

124 



Guides to the Higher Life 

-r\ * <- Every individual has a cer- 

December 16 , . J ., £ n A ^ u , 

tain capacity for God. 1 hat 

is to say, every individual has a certain 
capacity for receiving the divine and spirit- 
ual life which we call God, but this capac- 
ity must be resolved into character. A man 
by nature is much like a sponge. The 
sponge is dry and hard and shrunken, but 
put it into the water, let the tides and cur- 
rents flow through it, watch the process and 
see it expand. Man is hard and dry and 
barren and shrunken in his nature, but let 
the tides of the spiritual forces of this world 
flow through his soul, then watch that soul 
develop and expand. This is the passing 
over from capacity to character; this is the 
end and aim of all human living. 

December 17 The da X . ma { con f when 

' some spiritual spectroscope 

will demonstrate the actual conscious exist- 
ence and condition of souls beyond the line 
of time. That day has not yet arrived; 
meantime, the part of wisdom is to trust 
the highest intuitions of the soul and hold 
to the highest teachings of eternal life. 

t\ u o Separate us from the 

December 18 <.w * ±u *. 

unworthmess of the past; 

consecrate us to stauncher purposes, to 
more of the Christ heroism; touch us with 
tenderness and give us hearts that are 
athirst for the spirit of the living God. 

125 



Guides to the Higher Life 

December iq Stran S e mystery of a 

watchful Providence — no 
man ever follows the guiding star of his 
life without its leading him in adoration to 
the feet of the Holy One. 

December 20 We thank thee, O God, that 

at the approach of this 
Christmas time it is permitted us to enter 
into the world's joy. Grant that we may 
enter also into its sorrow. May the con- 
trasts of life move upon us and stir within 
the soul the Christ compassion. If the gos- 
pel of Jesus has seemed to us only a system 
of thought, may we now behold it as God's 
pity for the world. 

t^ , The reason why the old 

December 21 u . J , u . 

world joyousness, the joy- 

ousness of the New Testament, has gone 
out of our Christianity, is because the 
church has sacrificed the romance and 
poetry of the brooding sky, the burning 
zeal to penetrate the unknown, because she 
has sacrificed the star element in her relig- 
ion to the barest, hardest, most practical 
and uninspiring utilitarianism. We shall 
never have a religion that will once again 
set men on fire until we get one containing 
the realities symbolized by the star. Our 
Christianity today is practical and ethical; 
it needs only to be lifted up to the heavens 
and bathed in the infinite splendor. 
126 



Guides to the Higher Life 

Whatever critical explana- 
-December 22 ^ Qn ma y ^ e gj ven ^ e story 

of the star, its poetic and inspirational value 
is unchanged. The star symbolizes or inter- 
prets to us the mystery of the unknown ; it is 
heaven's signal to earth ; it is God's answer 
to the deathless passion of the human soul 
to know. 

■p. . The star hanging above the 

December 23 £ > u • * *. nu • *. 

manger of the infant Christ 

is significant of the religious life on its 

highest side. The Christian must dare the 

things of mystery. He must not fear the 

cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night. 

His search for a living God he must never 

relinquish. He must ever greet the 

unknown with a cheer. When men charge 

him with mysticism and call him visionary, 

when they tempt him to fall back upon the 

known and cease trying to penetrate the 

unknown, he must turn from them to the 

vision of the star. What it means he can 

not define, where it will lead he can not 

know. The Christ passion for spiritual 

adventure has burned into his soul, and he 

must go on and on — straight on and on 

to the end. 

n u Once again may the sweet 

December 24 . 7 t u u * 

^ voice of angels be heard, 

once again may the guiding star lead to 

the Christ, once again may the deep, sweet 

reality of Christmas fill every heart. 

127 



Guides to the Higher Life 

December 25 REMEMBREST THOU? 

Remembrest thou, Balthasar, that first night 
Whereon the star appeared ? How we spake long 
Of the high hope that stirred the world's sad heart ? 
How felt our spirits moved by some vast tide 
That downward swelled through all the tangled 

sky ? 
Remembrest how with pulses beating fear, 
And trust, and yearning passion — holding each 
To each — we turned our quivering faces up 
And saw the star, and knew that God was near? 
All hopes fulfilled, all dreams interpreted! 
Remembrest thou that night of rapturous joy, 
The silence and the peace, till we arose 
Drenched in the morning dew, and that white light 
That poured from new filled fountains in the soul? 
Remembrest thou that birthnight of our Christ ? .J 

So wilt thou continue, our Father, to lead 
us by the guiding of the Christ love. May 
our star be the face of the Holy One, full 
of strength, yet touched into grace and 
spiritual beauty by the infinite pity that 
transfigures it. May we behold the glory 
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. May 
his strength be our strength in every duty; 
his joy be our joy in every experience; his 
victory be our victory in every hour of trial. 
Make us aware that he came to answer our 
questions, to solve our perplexities, to 
fathom for us our mysteries ; that he came 
to save us from our sins into thy holiness ; 
out of our restlessness into thy peace. 

128 



Guides to the Higher Life 

T> u * Christianity makes its high- 

est appeal to the imagina- 
tion. The current of its power runs down 
into the smallest details of life, but it flows 
out also into the far things of mystery. It 
is the manger wherein the ox feeds; it is 
the star that hangs luminous in the depth of 
night. It thrusts into one's hand the homely 
task of the morning ; it lays over the imagi- 
nation the spell of an infinite splendor. It 
is the stern voice of duty echoing from the 
earth; it is a song that gathers its voice- 
less harmony out of the brooding silence of 
the night. It is the long, hard way to climb, 
the heat and burden of the day, the stone 
for a pillow at night ; but in the dreams that 
come stealing out of the mysterious depths 
of inner consciousness are visions of strange 
import, the golden ladders on which radiant 
lorms of thought and love come and go 
between earth and heaven. 

t^ . May Thy angels pitch their 

December 27 , / / , & a i 

' tents about us and keep 

with us the midnight watch. 

Set some star in the firmament of our 
lives to guide us onward. 

December 28 J^ery worth y ^ition is 

leading us onward, every 
yearning desire is a pledge of our divinity, 
every achievement is the call of the living 
God to go up higher. 

129 



Guides to the Higher Life 

December 29 Tl , me , is , S iven . us ~ * me in 

which to repair all things, 

time in which to gather up the fragments 
of our life and out of them to make a per- 
fect whole. 

December 30 ^ ^ e P ast ^ as ^ ve( * * or 

3 us ; shall we not live for the 

future ? And can we better live for the 
future than by living in the present, by 
meeting the present obligation, by being 
faithful to the present ideal as it is pre- 
sented to us ? If you imagine that living for 
the future means living for some far away 
heaven, you are wrong. The true living for 
the future is the living for the life opening 
out to us in this world. If we fail for time 
we fail for eternity. 

■p. , For the most part life lies 

uecemDer 31 before us Much ^ hag 

been thus far is matter for regret. But if 
yesterday has escaped us tomorrow is yet 
our own. It is our task to rouse ourselves, 
to struggle against the sin which doth so 
easily beset us, to take up the obligations of 
duty, to grapple with the tomorrow as 
though it were the beginning of a new life, 
to undertake with fresh earnestness the 
work of Christian living, to seek to purify 
our thoughts and consecrate our deeds, to 
make out of that which remains something 
truly divine. 
130 



O Faith that all the year hath led 
Our pilgrim feet unto this hour, 

Unite our hearts in these last words, 
And seal them with thy saving power. 

O Love that sweetens every pain, 
That hallows every cross we bear, 

Teach us who go our various ways, 
That thou, O Love, art everywhere. 

O Lord who quickeneth our faith, 
Who bringeth hope to every heart, 

Thou God of love, hear this our prayer, 
And richly bless us as we part. 



I3i 



NOV M 1903 j 



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